Co.DesignInspiring stories about innovation and business, seen through the lens of design.//www.fastcodesign.com
Copyright 2014, Mansueto Ventureshttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssen-usTue, 31 Mar 2015 22:01 +0000slabarre@fastcompany.com (Suzanne LaBarre)Tue, 31 Mar 2015 22:01 +0000faster@fastcompany.com (Fast Company)TXJP (0.0.1)innovationethonomicsgoodworld changing ideas/asset_files/static/logos/fastcodesign/design-fb-icon_big.pngCo.Design//www.fastcodesign.com
Inspiring stories about innovation and business, seen through the lens of design.4848Spotify Unveils A Bold New Brand Identity <p>For a brand that fronts such a vast and eclectic array of music—a database of some 30 million songs, including the top tunes in Malta, Bulgaria, and Paraguay, among others—Spotify's brand identity has always been surprisingly sedate: black, white, and an uninspiring green for colors; an off-the-shelf font; and a little stylized sound wave as a logo.</p>
<p>That made for a fairly dismal array of tools for communicating with the brand's 60 million avid fans.</p>
<p>On Friday, at South by Southwest, all that will change. For the duration of the festival, Spotify House will be arrayed in a bold and explosively colorful new brand identity, which was the result of a year's worth of work, and many trips to the company's Stockholm headquarters, by the New York design firm, Collins.</p>
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<p>"SXSW will be first big reveal of the program," says Leland Maschmeyer, Collins's founding partner and executive creative director. "We'll be pulling the sheet off the car."</p>
<p>Spotify's festival headquarters, located in an old auto body shop (901 E. 6th St, if you're making the trek), will be the backdrop for a non-stop parade of new and iconic acts on various stages throughout the space.</p>
<p>Spotify hasn't elaborated on how much this will impact the look and feel of the apps themselves, but has made it clear that this is no minor initiative when it comes to the advertising and marketing side.</p>
<p>"Because the system is so flexible it can go anywhere Spotify goes ­from screens, to print, to environments and interactive experiences," says Maschmeyer. "We pressure tested the system with tiny mobile ads on tiny mobile screens."<br />
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The goal of the new brand identity was to create a look that would signal to the brand's core audience of millennials that Spotify was as rich and lively as the music culture it fronted, rather than simply a technology service that served up songs.</p>
<p>The previous look, which had evolved over the company's seven year history was, Maschmeyer says, "a consistent drumbeat through the brand. The problem was, it was just a drumbeat. When all you have is white, black, and green, the logo, and Proxima Nova (font), there's not a lot to create with.</p>
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<p>"The big shift in helping the company go from looking like a tech company to more of an entertainment brand, was giving them the ability to communicate in much more diverse ways," he says. "We wanted something that was wildly diverse, but somehow always familiar—and a way to balance that tension."</p>
<p>Millennials, says Maschmeyer, share two distinct traits that were central to this project: they're highly visual and they want a hand in co-creation.</p>
<p>"Millennials' most popular media channel is Instagram, which is pure visuals," he says. "We knew that whatever we designed had to be identifiable as Spotify's voice, but could be adopted by the audience as they listened to it, made their playlists, and went to concerts. We needed to create a participatory system."<br />
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To convey authenticity, the new look had to channel those millennial values. "Lots of companies are targeting this audience," says Alexandra Tanguay, Spotify's global brand director. "But for us, it's unique. Our founders are millennials, our audience are millennials. We listen to them, we talk to them, we interact with them for hours every day. The simple language we were using wasn't capturing the energy and power we have with that audience."<br />
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At the core of the Spotify experience is a love of music, but the Collins team wanted to push that idea: what happens when people really connect with a song? When people come to a concert and scream and cry and sing along? They found a video on YouTube of a whiny baby rocking her carseat to Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" as inspiration.</p>
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<p>"It speaks to a visceral feeling that people have when their favorite song comes on," says Maschmeyer, as the baby jiggled and cooed on the screen in Collins's conference room. "It all came down to the idea that people emotionally "burst" when they connect with a song."<br />
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Out of that idea grew a series of bursting shapes that can sit behind content, or in front of it. The original shapes were abstracted versions of the "Play," "Pause," and Pause/Record" buttons on music devices.<br />
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The dreary brand palette—with one lone green as its spot of color—was particularly desperate for an upgrade. Its origins, says Tanguay, were utterly arbitrary. "The color was a decision made by our founder (Daniel Ek) about seven years ago for a simple reason: no one else was using that green. Over the years, we have some earned equity with the color, but this green wasn't modern or fresh."<br />
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The new Spotify green has a little more "pop," says Maschmeyer, and is the central player in a palette that has grown to nearly three dozen "approved" colors.<br />
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One of the trickiest issues for the team was how to deal with photography. Since Spotify uses images borrowed from thousands of musical acts, it needed a way to brand a picture so that it looked like something from Spotify even if the company's logo wasn't plastered on it.<br />
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<p>The answer came from a deep dive into music history, in the duotone photos from album covers and concert posters from the 1960s. That style originated with bands that were trying to find a low-budget way to promote their concerts. <br />
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"That aesthetic could be applied to lots of different types of photography," Maschmeyer says. " So even though the pictures were shot in different styles, and by different photographers, when you put them through that filter, they all hang together."<br />
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The duotone look became so much a part of the brand identity, that Brett Renfer, Collins's director of experience design, created a software program (subsequently nicknamed, "The Colorizer") to automate the process—a critical issue for a company like Spotify which has designers across 58 markets, from Andorra to Uruguay, all scrambling to brand content with the Spotify look.</p>
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<p>"The software automatically duotones photos," says Maschmeyer. "It draws from a very robust but select color palette and every image you output is always on brand. Not only is it fun, but it addressed another problem: Spotify has so much content to process that to have software do the heavy lifting was fantastic. "<br />
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No kidding: Spotify claims to release 20,000 new songs every day. Spotify users have created over 1.5 billion playlists.</p>
<p>"Spotify becomes a frame and platform for all the content," says Maschmeyer. " It's not just about headlines and photography but about all those elements working together."</p>
<p>"Our designers have had a blast, given the box they've been in for the past few years," says Tanguay. <br />
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It's the kind of client that Collins, now independent from its previous ties to IPG, is delighted to have on its roster.<br />
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"We were so honored to get a chance to work with Spotify," says Collins's co-founder Brian Collins. "It's our ideal: to work with brands that move faster than culture."</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3043547http://www.fastcodesign.com/3043547/spotifys-new-look-signals-its-identity-shift?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3043547/spotifys-new-look-signals-its-identity-shift?partner=rss#commentsThu, 12 Mar 2015 11:30 +0000InnovationRecession-proof Fashion? Look for the "Made in Alabama" Label.<figure class="inline-large"><img class="float-left" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3344/3295372033_525479aaed_o.jpg" alt="" width="288" height="605" /></figure>The most heartwarming story to come out of Fashion Week is taking place far across town from the posh tents at Bryant Park, in the slightly down-at-the-heels precincts of New York's East Village.
<p>Up three flights of steep, bright red stairs in a converted firehouse, Natalie Chanin, founder of <a href="http://www.alabamachanin.com/">Alabama Chanin</a>, is showing a beguiling collection of hand-made clothes to a select audience of buyers and Chanin groupies.</p>
<p>Chanin's label, formerly known as Project Alabama, is that rarity in the fashion biz — a totally grown-to-sewn-in-the-USA line. In this case, the garments are crafted by a cadre of stitchery wizards in Chanin's tiny hometown of Florence, Alabama. </p>
<p>The clothes, which are all organic cottons, are lavished with quilting and embroidery techniques from the Depression-era South. Chanin, who was a finalist for the National Design Award for Fashion, based her company on the idea that good design should be part of everyday living, and that the artisanship of the past should be kept alive. To that end, stitchers in their early 20s work alongside those in their 70s, producing garments in the spirit of the traditional quilting bee. </p>
<p>Their appeal is primal. &quot;People throughout the world have memories of some textile from our childhood,&quot; Chanin says, over fried chicken and potato salad at her show. &quot;It might be a baby blanket, or a favorite item of clothing. So people respond to these clothes because they're handmade.&quot;</p>
<p>Despite their down-home DNA, these are hardly thrift shop garments. Chernin's line is available at such tony shops as Barney's, Bergdorf Goodman, and Harvey Nichols. </p>
<figure class="inline-large"><img class="float-right" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3295372067_830e1269c8_o.jpg" alt="sleeve detail" width="384" height="256" /></figure>But in the bleak topography of current retail, where even the luxury labels are getting battered, Chanin's added layer of meaning is proving a potent force. &quot;We haven't seen any effects of the recession,&quot; she says. &quot;People who do have money now want to spend it on something with meaning.&quot;
<p>Chanin's latest venture ramps that social entrepreneurship up another level. For her denim line, she's turned to Father Andrew, a young Catholic priest in the Bronx who is part of a venture called <a href="http://www.goodsofconscience.com/">Goods of Conscience</a>. He employs Guatemalan and El Salvadoran parishioners to dye indigo in the church's basement. &quot;These clothes have the feeling of being old, but new, all at the same time.&quot; </p>
<figure class="inline-large"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3137/3295372049_e420eb8c5d_o.jpg" alt="Red Dress" width="230" height="562" /></figure>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/1174972http://www.fastcodesign.com/1174972/recession-proof-fashion-look-for-the-made-in-alabama-label?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1174972/recession-proof-fashion-look-for-the-made-in-alabama-label?partner=rss#commentsMon, 01 Dec 2014 15:46 +0000Albama ChaninGoods of ConscienceDesignA Design Maestro Turns His Hand To A New Challenge: Wine<p>When Alberto <a href="http://www.alessi.com/en" target="_blank">Alessi</a>, head of the world-famous Italian design factory that bears his last name, sits down to decide whether to manufacture a new product, he runs it through a carefully devised set of metrics to see if it's likely to be a market success. "<a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/564/masters-of-design-2009/object-lessons-alberto-alessi" target="_self">The Formula</a>," as he's come to call it, measures such things as beauty, function, communication language (how well a product conveys something like status or value), and price.<br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Running a design firm is not unlike being a gardener.</q></aside></p>
<p>Those same principles, he says, can be applied to the wine he's now producing on the misty banks of Lake Orta, deep in the heart of Lombardy. Indeed, Alessi says, his experience in running a design firm is not unlike being a gardener.<br />
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Just before the harvest began for his pinot noir and chardonnay grapes, Alessi chatted with us about why he launched this new venture, and how the design business prepared him for the life of a vintner.</p>
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<p>"I had some free time," he told us over email. "I'm not able to stay quiet, I start feeling anxious. I love wine so I wanted to see what I could do in that field on my beloved <a href="http://www.orta.net/eng1/indexe.htm" target="_blank">Lake Orta</a>, which is not a traditional place for good wine. The idea was to make an homage to Burgundy, the French region of the wines we prefer: pinot noir and chardonnay. A good challenge, since we wanted to create the best burgundy outside of France." <br />
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In 2001, Alessi bought Cascina Eugenia, a dilapidated farmhouse and the surrounding land on the eastern hillside of Lake Orta that had already appeared on maps of the area in 1723. At the time he bought the farmstead, the property had been neglected for half a century. His first two years were devoted to clearing the scrub that tangled the fields.</p>
<p>Through research, Alessi discovered that vineyards had existed in the area since the ninth century, although most wine produced around the lake was solely for family consumption. No one had ever attempted to create a wine of excellent quality for market distribution. But Alessi was undeterred.</p>
<p>As he recounts on his <a href="http://www.lasignoraeugeniaeilpasserosolitario.com/?lang=en" target="_blank">website</a>, his first impulse was not to start a wine business—he was attracted to the romance of the idea, not its commercial potential. Hence, the label he chose for his wine: La Signora Eugenia e il passero solitario (Madame Eugenia and the lonely sparrow). It's named after the house, Cascina Eugenia and the local sparrows.</p>
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<p>What's more, Alessi loved the idea of designing all the things that surround a vineyard—of, as he writes on his website, "building a global project around an aesthetic idea that, yes, concerned the quality of the wine, but also all the things that would surround it, such as the architecture, the wine cellar, the bottle, the graphic of the labels, the packaging, the website, in short, all the aspects of its communication and its fruition."</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The process was not unlike nurturing a stable of sensitive, willful, egocentric designers.</q></aside>
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Once the area was ready for cultivation, he called in <a href="https://www.biodynamics.com/biodynamics.html" target="_blank">biodynamic agriculture</a> specialist <a href="http://www.biodynamieconseil.com/Pages/aboutus.aspx" target="_blank">Jacques Mell</a> to analyze the soil and determine what varieties of grapes would most likely thrive in the unique climate surrounding the lake.<br />
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Through testing, Mell determined that the soil in Alessi's land was sandy, with an acid pH, and glacial, made of granite and gneiss. The combination of a sandy, acidic soil with the area's abundant rainfall (three times the amount that falls in Burgundy) made for challenging, but potentially great, conditions for creating a distinctive wine. He divided the land into seven vineyards, matching vines to the particular soil and growing conditions of each. There were two vineyards for chardonnay, three for pinot noir, and a final two for sparkling wine made from overripe grapes.</p>
<aside class="sidebar right"><div class="sidebar-inner"><p><strong>Applying Alessi's famous formula to wine</strong></p>
<p>Alessi walks us through how a bottle of La Signora Eugenia e il passero solitario pinot noir might fare if he ran it through his formula. In the formula, products are scored 1 to 5 on each measure, with 5 being the top score: <br />
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1. Function: 3.5 to 4 (The bottle can be reused as a decanter, a candle holder or a flower vase.)<br />
2. Sensory/Memory/Imagination: 4 to 5 (Because the wine is strikingly good)<br />
3. Communication/Language: 4 to 5 (Because the wine is rare, and because of the challenge of making good wine on Lake Orta shores))<br />
4. Price: 2 (Because it's very expensive)<br />
= total score 13.5 to 16<br />
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Too high for his production quantities, which are just 4,000 to 5,000 bottles per year. For conventional design products, Alessi's "Formula" also predicts annual sales. For example, Philippe Starck's iconic "<a href="http://www.alessi.com/en/products/detail/psjs-juicy-salif-citrus-squeezer" target="_blank">Juicy Salif</a>" squeezer—whose striking form earns it a 5 on the "communication language" scale, but whose negligible ability to wring the juice out of a lemon earns it a measly 2 in "function"—might score a 14. That translates into about 50,000 units per year.</p></div></aside>
<p><br />
Then began the painstaking work of planting the vines, staking each for best exposure to the sun. There was heavy labor in digging trenches to encourage water runoff during heavy rains (to limit the chance of fungal attacks). And, during the summer, Alessi's agricultural team constantly watched for violent thunderstorms and hail that might blow through when the cold air off the mountains collides with hot air off the plains.</p>
<p>For a perfectionist like Alessi, who's accustomed to controlling every aspect of production, the experience was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. "It's been frustrating because you depend so much from nature, and that's something you cannot control (being me at the end an industrialist, I'll let you to imagine…)!" he said. "But it's also been fun because it has been the first time for me to actually see, through the plants and vegetation changes, nature's modifications over the seasons." <br />
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In short, the whole process was not unlike nurturing a stable of sensitive, willful, egocentric designers to get their best work. Alessi reminded us that he said as much in his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Dream-Factory-Alessi-since/dp/3829013779" target="_blank"><em>The Dream Factory: Alessi Since 1921</em></a>.<br />
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I asked Alessi how his design experience helped him make decisions in the vineyard. One of the main traits of Italian design factories is the practice of the "good gardener," he replied. "… sensitive, attentive, and patient, the good gardener can be helpful in understanding the practice of Italian design factories. The good gardener sows, of course, what he thinks is right, but above all he tills the ground carefully to receive the new crops and takes particular care when the first shoots begin to appear, nurturing them carefully to enable them to express the potential they have within them. Moreover, the good gardener knows he can count on unexpected seeds brought to him by the wind. Good products arrive when they want to. It is difficult to produce works of art to order. Despite all efforts, good projects follow their own rhythms, which are often inscrutable and can rarely be planned."</p>
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<p>Once the first grapes were ripe, Alessi's team began the laborious process of hand-picking the harvest, transporting the grapes in small batches to the cellar where they were pressed and put in vats and barrels for fermentation. The average yield was merely three glasses of wine per plant (typically, a mature plant produces about five bottles of wine).</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Good projects follow their own rhythms, which are often inscrutable and can rarely be planned.</q></aside>
<p><br />
Then came the fun part, for a designer: creating the bottle itself. While he had left most of the planting and growing to experts, Alessi himself delved into research on ancient bottles that led him to the very dawn of material culture, and onward through history into the world of Leonardo da Vinci. "The Leo bottle is not really a design made by me, neither by Leonardo: it was just the result of a long passionate historic research on small containers to keep and to serve wine," Alessi said. "Its shape is archetypal, one can find similar containers in old paintings, even much older that Leonardo's drawings. It's also similar to the lacrimarium, a container for tears from Roman times."</p>
<p>The label for the bottle was designed by Spanish designer <a href="http://www.guixe.com/" target="_blank">Marti Guixé</a>, and the relief marks on its bottom, which prevent the hot glass from sticking to the conveyor belt, are inspired by the "<a href="http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2013-10-17/da-vinci%E2%80%99s-knots-it%E2%80%99s-all-about-dress" target="_blank">knots of da Vinci</a>" one of Leonardo's favorite decorative motifs.<br />
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The cone-shaped bottle itself is designed to address two issues: preservation and sustainability. The shape of the bottle fits within the dimensions described by Leonard's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man" target="_blank"><em>Vitruvian Man</em></a> as well as within the "<a href="http://www.contracosta.edu/legacycontent/math/pentagrm.htm" target="_blank">golden pentagram</a>," a figure familiar to ancient mathematicians and Renaissance alchemists. Alessi intends to analyze whether this special form helps to better preserve his wines.<br />
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<p>More immediately, however, he was determined that his bottle address a contemporary problem: what happens to it when you've finished the nectar inside? As he relates on the <a href="http://www.lasignoraeugeniaeilpasserosolitario.com/?lang=en" target="_blank">website</a> dedicated to the wine:<br />
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<blockquote><p>As a good consumer of wine, I have always been surprised at the amount of time and energy required to dispose of the empty bottles. The empty bottle is an object not without dignity, and indeed often has a highly aesthetic quality, but is inexorably destined to a sometimes laborious disposal. It is an ethical issue for people like me who work in the world of objects. It makes a gap— logistic, functional, economic and also of meaning in family life—a sort of stupidity of mass consumption that seems destined to repeat itself endlessly millions, even billions of times every year. Alternatively, the Leo bottle… has been designed to be not thrown away once the nectar that it contains and protects is finished. Indeed, upon reaching this point it reveals its true nature as an object: it lends itself well to be re-used as a decanter, a candlestick or a flower vase.</p></blockquote></p>
<p>The bottle's concave bottom is designed to fit with a curved plastic wine cooler, called a glacette, which is filled with refrigerating liquid. Store it in the fridge until needed, then snap it into the bottom of the bottle to keep the wine cool at the table as you drink it.<br />
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Sadly, Alessi said, you won't be finding his pinot or chardonnay at your local wine store anytime soon. "While production is far too much for the needs of even the enlarged Alessi families, it's still very limited," he said. "But we do not plan to sell to the United States. First, it seems that customs are too complicated for our initial organization, and second because our wines are made following French tradition and taste and probably would be not that appealing to American palates."</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3035659http://www.fastcodesign.com/3035659/an-italian-design-maestro-turns-his-hand-to-a-new-challenge-wine?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3035659/an-italian-design-maestro-turns-his-hand-to-a-new-challenge-wine?partner=rss#commentsFri, 19 Sep 2014 12:00 +0000AlessiCascina EugeniachardonnayItalian wineLeonardoMarti Guixepinot noirwineInnovationWanderlustInside The War To Reinvent The Soda Fountain <p>With the battlefield deployment of three new fountain machines, PepsiCo is firing a shot across competitor Coca-Cola's* bow in the food service business.<br />
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"The creation of <a href="http://www.pepsispire.com/" target="_blank">Spire</a> (PepsiCo's beverage dispensers) signals that we're going to get a lot more competitive in the space," says Brad Jakeman, president of PepsiCo's Global Beverages Group.</p>
<aside class="info"><div class="info-inner"><p>Top innovators at Coca-Cola and Target will discuss how big brands stay nimble at the <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/innovation-by-design-awards/2014" target="_self"><strong>2014 Innovation By Design Awards and Conference</strong></a>, Wednesday, October 15, in New York. Sign up now!</p></div></aside>
<p><br />
And not a moment too soon. Fountain machines may be the latest front in an ongoing war between the two long-time antagonists, but this time the real competition is not so much each other as it is the 7-Eleven down the street from that Burger King or McDonald's where PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are installing their new machines. As consumers gravitate to waters, teas, juices, and energy drinks, fast food restaurateurs have watched in despair as consumers take it upon themselves to find the drinks they want, instead of relying on the soda machines in the restaurants themselves.<br />
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"Fast food operators started seeing more customers buying sandwiches and bringing in beverages from the convenience store down the street," says John Sicher, editor of <em>Beverage-Digest</em>. That's a problem. "Getting beverages right in restaurants is a critical focus for our [corporate] customers," Jakeman says. "Beverages represent a significant portion of their profitability."</p>
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<p>The beverage behemoths can ill-afford to alienate that segment of the business. Food service—everything from the fountain machines at Wendy's to the nozzles at the college cafeteria—is an important one to the soda giants, which are currently coping with plummeting sales of carbonated beverages in their all-important North American markets. According to Sicher, sales of Coca-Cola's carbonated sodas fell 2% overall in the U.S. last year, the ninth straight year of decline. Its soda sales were flat in the most recent quarter, while PepsiCo's fell 2%. The diet soda business has been particularly hard hit, he says. "The decline in diet came about very suddenly. The accumulated buzz about aspartame in social media seems to have had an impact."<br />
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As consumers increasingly turn to healthier drinks, or those with a caffeine kick, the pressure to deliver a more robust array of choices than the typical four-to-seven nozzles on a conventional fountain machine becomes more urgent.<br />
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Currently, Sicher says, Coca-Cola controls about 70% of the fountain machine market, while PepsiCo has about 20%, and Dr. Pepper/Snapple the final 10%.</p>
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<p>To stave off further decline, both companies are fielding glitzy new machines, hoping they can lure more customers through a mix of engaging design and infinite choice. <br />
<br />
<strong>Design DNA: Apple vs. Ferrari</strong><br />
<br />
Before the arrival of the new machines, most fast food restaurants relied on traditional dispensers that let customers, clutching their glasses, pour their own drinks from nozzles. Typically, there were five to seven choices—a cola, a diet cola, a root beer, maybe a lemonade or a citrusy drink like Sprite or Mountain Dew.</p>
<p>But the arrival in 2009 of Coca-Cola's sexy red "Freestyle," refrigerator-sized fountain machine, with a touch screen interface featuring dozens of choices, changed all that. Five years later, PepsiCo's most glamorous new entrant, is a similarly sized machine with a 32-inch touch screen that allows consumers to create more than 1,000 beverage combinations—raspberry lemon Mountain Dew, Brisk Iced Tea with a splash of cherry. Whatever you can dream, the company says, you can create through a UI created by PepsiCo's in-house design team and digital agency <a href="http://www.firstborn.com/" target="_blank">Firstborn</a>.</p>
<p>The biggest machines are generally in high-volume fast food restaurants. But now smaller restaurants, who may only have room for a countertop unit, can get in the game. PepsiCo is fielding two smaller units—similar to tablets on stands—which enable fewer combinations of brands and flavors. No-calorie flavor shots and syrup are dispensed through the traditional bag-in-a-box technology that ran the old fountain machines—an easier transition for restaurateurs than learning a new technology, Jakeman says.</p>
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<p>With its white, oversized, iPod-like screen, <em>Beverage Digest</em>'s Sicher calls PepsiCo's equipment "Apple-like." The equipment comes in gray, black, or white ("pearl" in PepsiCo lingo), with big bubbles on a screen that serve as starting points for a customer's beverage fantasy creation.<br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The question remains whether these machines, with their video game-like appeal, can arrest the slide of soda sales. </q></aside></p>
<p>Mauro Porcini, the company's chief design officer, acknowledges Apple's influence. "If what he [Sicher] means is that the machine is in the background and it's all about the screen, then it's true," he says. "The idea that 'the screen is the celebration' was introduced by Apple. We are following that philosophy."</p>
<p>The design brief for the devices specified two goals: to create a consumer experience that was engaging and enjoyable, and to attract attention from a distance.</p>
<p>Spire's UI was designed to be dynamic when not in use, an attention-grabber when a customer walks into a restaurant. The screen pops with colorful brand bubbles, each sprouting icons that tell users something about that beverage's history or philosophy. A Pepsi bubble, for example, might spawn a set of headphones; a Mountain Dew bubble will peel off a mountain bike; and a fit-looking woman emerges from a Diet Pepsi bubble.</p>
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<p>"Everything has a specific graphic language," Porcini says. We generated a library of icons that change and relate to what the brand stands for—energy, sports, music, and fitness." When a consumer touches the screen, that busy UI fades into the background. "We didn't want to create too much distraction, so it becomes very subtle," he says.</p>
<p>The most challenging needle to thread, Jakeman says, was the amount of time users spent in front of the machine. "We wanted high engagement, but ease of transaction. We wanted it to be approachable but not intimidating. We went through multiple rounds of UI and UX testing to find the best mix."<br />
<br />
PepsiCo has combined these innovations with vigorous efforts at drumming up food service business. PepsiCo recently signed <a href="http://www.buffalowildwings.com" target="_blank">Buffalo Wild Wings</a> and <a href="http://en.shanghaidisneyresort.com.cn/en/" target="_blank">Disney's Shanghai</a> theme park. And it's looking to leverage its snack food business with collaborations, such as its recent deal with Taco Bell that uses <a href="http://www.tacobell.com/food/menuitem/Doritos-Locos-Tacos-Supreme" target="_blank">Doritos Locos Tacos</a> as the shell for a line of tacos.<br />
<br />
"Some of our competitors," Jakeman says in a thinly veiled reference to Coca-Cola, "go into a meeting with a restaurant customer and can only talk about beverage options. We can talk about snacks and food, our beverage portfolio, and our culinary expertise."<br />
<br />
<strong>Coca-Cola Fires Back</strong><br />
<br />
Whether all these efforts can close the gap with Coca-Cola is anybody's guess.<br />
<br />
When Coke unveiled its own touch-screen machine, the fire engine red, Ferrari-inspired dazzler named <a href="https://www.coca-colafreestyle.com/" target="_blank">Freestyle</a> five years ago, it took the lead in both development and deployment of these machines. The company says it now has 20,000 dispensers in restaurants in 150 markets across 48 states. <br />
<br />
But not all restaurateurs had room for the big machines, so smaller ones had to stick with the old-fashioned dispensers. To address its shortcomings in the counter-top space, the company recently debuted three new fountain machines, which will be rolled out by the end of the year. Two are designed for medium-volume locations, and can dispense 80 different beverages; the third, designed for work break rooms or cafes, dispenses 35 options.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Any down-time is literally money off the table.</q></aside>
<p><br />
All are electronically linked to the mothership in Atlanta. "The machines call home every night," says Jennifer Mann, vice president and general manager, Coca-Cola Freestyle. "We can track their service history and push through software fixes in real time. Often we can notify our service network before the customer even experiences a problem."<br />
<br />
That's vital since beverages represent the products with the highest profit margins for the restaurant operator, and any down-time is literally money off the table.<br />
<br />
Coke's real advantage, however, is its head start in the social media game. While PepsiCo has a robust social media plan in the works, Jakeman says the company decided against "turning on the switch in the first phase."<br />
<br />
That leaves the field to Coca-Cola, which has been using Twitter and Facebook to jack up interest in Freestyle since its launch. It has just rolled out a new tweak on its popular "<a href="http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coca-cola-unbottled/coca-cola-freestyle-app-your-custom-mix-on-demand" target="_blank">Create Your Own Mix</a>" app that allows customers to concoct a personal brew from more than 100 drink options, name it, then scan the QR code at a participating dispenser, and let the machine act as brewmeister.<br />
<br />
Apart from addressing the conundrum of choice, both companies are using the machines for new product development, monitoring what drinks customers are mixing, and looking for combinations that might inspire new beverage flavors.<br />
<br />
"Because these machines are all networked, down to the store level, we're able to understand what customers are buying in what day parts," says Jakeman. Then, he says, they can tailor the interface to address what sells best and when.</p>
<p>Indeed, Pepsi's Porcini says, they've already been surprised by some best-sellers. Consumers at Sienna Univeristy, for example, have shown an unexpected fondness for strawberry lemonade.</p>
<p>"The UI is designed with things like that in mind," he says. "We can change the configuration of the brand bubbles, their size, and position based on the preferences of different communities." Don't be surprised to see a Tropicana strawberry lemonade on your supermarket shelves sometime soon.</p>
<p>Still, the question remains whether the machines, with their video-game like appeal, can arrest the slide of the beverage companies' core products. As the market splinters, the attraction of a mango vanilla cola with a splash of root beer may be lost on consumers who have already switched their brand loyalty to apple cucumber Suja juice or Mama Chia kiwi lime, leaving the beverage giants crying in their beer.</p>
<p><em>*Full disclosure: I'm writing a book about Coca-Cola's design strategy, which will be published in February 2015. My favorite beverages generally involve stemmed glasses.</em></p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3034304http://www.fastcodesign.com/3034304/innovation-by-design/inside-the-war-to-reinvent-the-soda-fountain?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3034304/innovation-by-design/inside-the-war-to-reinvent-the-soda-fountain?partner=rss#commentsWed, 13 Aug 2014 11:30 +0000Beverage-DigestBrad Jakemancoca-colaFreestyleJennifer MannJohn SicherMauro PorciniPepsi SpirepepsicoInnovationInnovation By DesignYves Béhar, Star Venture Designer, Plots His Next Move<p>It's hard to imagine a design firm with a more eclectic portfolio of products: an infinity-shaped <a href="http://www.lightology.com/index.php?module=prod_detail&amp;prod_id=60460" target="_blank">chandelier</a> of Swarovski crystals, a catalog of cheap <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/verbien/augen_optics/?focus=overview" target="_blank">colorful glasses</a> for myopic Mexican children, a sleek step-counting <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/jawbone/up24/?focus=overview" target="_blank">bracelet</a> for fitness junkies, a <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/olpc/xo_laptop/?focus=overview" target="_blank">laptop</a> with a child-friendly UI for techno-disadvantaged kids, a hip little <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/jawbone/mini_jambox/?focus=overview" target="_blank">stereo speaker</a> for audiophiles, a sleek set of <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/jimmyjane/form_2_%26amp%3B_3/?focus=overview" target="_blank">vibrators</a> for the ladies, a <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/sodastream/source/?focus=overview" target="_blank">gadget</a> to let you make your own soda, and an environmentally friendly <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/edyn/garden_sensor_%26amp%3B_water_valve/?focus=overview" target="_blank">garden watering system</a>, among others.</p>
<aside class="info"><div class="info-inner"><p>Want to explore the newest ideas in design with industry leaders? Attend the <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/innovation-by-design-awards/2014" target="_self"><strong>2014 Innovation By Design Awards and Conference</strong></a>, Wednesday October 15, in New York.</p></div></aside>
<p>The contradictions embodied in that line-up—glam goodies for the 1% cheek by jowl with life-enhancing products for the bottom of the pyramid—start to make sense when you consider the designer at the firm's helm: 47-year old <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/60525/all-about-yves" target="_self">Yves Béhar</a>, born in land-locked Switzerland yet never more at home than when he's riding a surfboard onto a Northern California beach.</p>
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<p>Last week, Béhar's firm, San Francisco-based <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/60525/all-about-yves" target="_self">fuseproject</a>, struck a <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3033497/fast-feed/yves-behar-is-selling-his-15-year-old-design-firm-fuseproject" target="_self">deal</a> with the Chinese marketing conglomerate, <a href="http://www.bluefocusgroup.com/en/" target="_blank">BlueFocus</a> Communication Group, that would give the Chinese a 75% share of the company in exchange for what the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4a6396d8-125e-11e4-93a5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38Ux1sWrF" target="_blank"><em>Financial Times</em></a> reported was $46.7 million. Béhar wouldn't confirm the number.</p>
<p>As the design industry buzzes about what that deal might mean for fuseproject, Béhar insists he's confident that his firm won't lose its soul, or need to rethink its business model, in exchange for the infusion of cold, hard cash. Which is, of course, easier said than done.</p>
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<h4><a name="A_Venture_Business_Model_Blossoms">A Venture Business Model Blossoms</a></h4>
<p>Fuseproject has a venture design-based business model, which means that the firm often takes an equity stake in its clients' companies. Béhar and his partner, Mitch Pergola, first launched their venture business model while working with Aliph, the firm behind the Jawbone headset. Fuseproject had been hired to design the first version of the jewelry-like device, with its sophisticated noise-canceling technology, back in 2004. Despite glowing reviews in the design world, the device had connectivity and distribution problems that did it in, and Aliph went from 20 employees down to four.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>BlueFocus plans to build a design-centric group in the U.S. and, as its first American acquisition, fuseproject would be in a position to help define what that means.</q></aside>
<p><br />
But Béhar still believed in the product and wanted to keep improving it, even though the company had no money to pay for outside design help. So Béhar approached Aliph's CEO, Hosain Rahman, with a different idea: instead of offering the work-for-hire arrangement typical of many design firms, fuseproject would take an equity stake in the company. Not only did that model work for Jawbone, but it realigned fuseproject's broader business strategy. By sharing in the success of the projects they germinated, they could sell value, not quantity. The royalties they'd earn from their partnerships would free them from the mandate to constantly hustle for new business and add headcount, only to have to lay people off when business was thin.</p>
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<p>Fuseproject's model ultimately evolved into a tiered structure: at the base, traditional strategic engagements with clients like Samsung and Johnson &amp; Johnson; those help to support more speculative equity partnerships with young companies like Edyn and Y Water. The combined returns of those two allow the company to take on social impact projects like One Laptop per Child, or See Well to Learn, the Mexican eyeglass initiative. "We bootstrapped the venture design approach and now are working with 25 companies," Béhar says. Other design firms have since adopted variations of this model, helping to incubate new companies in exchange for a piece of the action. "In many ways this partnership model is the future of design," Béhar says.</p>
<p>With the BlueFocus acquisition, fuseproject will be able to expand its business model, Béhar says. "Over the past seven years, we've been approached by other companies—from big corporations to Internet and IT firms to big advertising conglomerates," he says in an interview. "But if that meant we would lose our independence to work on a variety of things in venture mode, it was a no-go."</p>
<h4><a name="The_Next_Phase">The Next Phase</a></h4>
<p>For BlueFocus, the fuseproject acquisition is the first step in launching a network in the U.S. According to <a href="http://adage.com/article/global-news/china-s-bluefocus-enters-u-s-fuseproject-stake/294302/" target="_blank"><em>Ad Age</em></a>, the company hopes to increase its revenue 10-fold within 10 years, with 33% of its business to come from outside China. Last year, it bought a stake in two London-based firms: Huntsworth, a PR and health-care agency, and the social-media agency We Are Social. Béhar says BlueFocus plans to build a design-centric group in the U.S. and, as its first American acquisition, his company would be in a position to help define what that means. "I'm excited about taking that idea and building it to scale," Behar says.</p>
<p>The BlueFocus deal, Béhar insists, is not designed to fund a bunch of fuseproject offices around the globe, although he won't rule that out. "I'm not sure about other offices," he says. "We already have deep and long relationships in Europe and Asia, and it hasn't been clear that some of our clients even want us to be in Europe. They like the Silicon Valley spirit we bring—the sense of being deep in a dynamic startup."</p>
<p>Nor, he says, is the deal about being able to pay competitive wages to designers who have become the Valley's newest darlings—with compensation packages to prove it.</p>
<p>"Our people get approached all the time," he says. "But the team (of 75 people) has been extremely stable. Their ability to affect the end result of an exciting project rather than disappearing into the ranks of thousands of employees in a large corporation is what attracts a lot of people here."</p>
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<p>Béhar says that BlueFocus funds will help give his business a stronger foundation, and let him be more aggressive in building the venture design model. And the company's "generous" bonus pool is fed by returns from the venture partnerships.</p>
<p>He points to some of the company's most recent venture projects: <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/edyn/garden_sensor_%26amp%3B_water_valve/?focus=overview" target="_blank">Edyn</a>, a garden sensing system that lets people manage what they grow more efficiently—a potentially huge idea, given the current West Coast drought. And <a href="http://www.fuseproject.com/work/august/smart_lock/?focus=overview" target="_blank">August</a>, a smartlock system that lets you manage your home's security from your smartphone or computer. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The equity models allows firms to make fewer bets, but stick with them.</q></aside></p>
<p>"One of our core values from the beginning," Béhar says, "is editing. That means being an editor of the type of projects we work on, the outcomes, and results. It's never about feature creep. It's always about fulfilling the highest quality in a way that is most efficient and intuitive."</p>
<p>Unlike some other Valley firms, fuseproject doesn't bring a bunch of startups in-house, give them a few months of intensive instruction, and send them on their way. The equity models allows the firm to make fewer bets, but stick with them, Béhar says. "We take our companies all the way. We don't give them a kick and see where they land."</p>
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<h4><a name="The_risks">The risks</a></h4>
<p>There are hazards to taking on a big-bucks partner. After popping the Champagne, and doing the relentlessly positive press tour, the hard work of a business marriage begins. Who does the dishes, who takes out the trash? Who sets priorities? Who picks the projects? Who's watching the bottom line?</p>
<p>Joe Duffy, creative director and founder of Minneapolis's <a href="http://www.duffy.com/" target="_blank">Duffy &amp; Partners</a>, has seen, all too closely, what can happen when you sell your company to an outside firm. In 1989, he sold his company to the Michael Peters Group in London. Duffy was thrilled. But Peters was a better designer than businessman and the firm went belly-up in a year.</p>
<p>Lesson learned, Duffy says: "Do your homework. Michael Peters was one of my all-time heroes, but I thought of him relative to the work he did, not the company he ran." Duffy shut his group down to avoid spending two years in London bankruptcy court.</p>
<p>He then rejoined his former partners at the midwestern advertising agency at Fallon, which was purchased in 2000 by the giant advertising conglomerate, Publicis. It was an opportunity to go global, and the group opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, and Sao Paolo. The ugly underside: Duffy found himself constantly on planes, and managing creatives around the world. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>If you're managing that many people in that many places, you have no time for creative direction, let alone design.</q></aside></p>
<p>Lesson learned? "If you're managing that many people in that many places, you have no time for creative direction, let alone design. My fear, for somebody like Yves, is that he's a hands-on designer. Yes, I was able to have a global impact, but I wasn't doing what I love, which is design."</p>
<p>In 2003, he decided the trade-offs weren't worth it, and he left Publicis to open his own shop. Again. "If you're independent you have control over who you work with, work for, what clients you take on, and how big a machine you build. When times aren't good, somebody else will tell you what you have to do. You have to go to board meetings, and you may have to work with assholes who don't think about design the way you do. The control you had is gone."</p>
<p>Having seen the tricky business of corporate partnerships from both directions, Duffy has some final advice: "I learned from my mistakes," he says. "Be really careful of who you're getting in bed with, who you'll be sitting across the table from, and who will make decisions that will control your life."</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3033585http://www.fastcodesign.com/3033585/innovation-by-design/yves-behar-plots-his-next-move?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3033585/innovation-by-design/yves-behar-plots-his-next-move?partner=rss#commentsWed, 30 Jul 2014 11:30 +0000AugustbluefocusEdynFuseprojectventure designYves BeharInnovationInnovation By DesignFirst Transatlantic "Scent Message" Sends Smell of Paris To New York<p>At 11:31 EDT on Tuesday, an <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031865/harvard-professor-to-send-the-worlds-first-scent-message-across-the-pond" target="_self">email message encoded with the scent</a> of Paris, winged its way across the ether to land in the inbox of a Harvard professor waiting eagerly in a skull-littered basement room in New York's American Museum of Natural History.<br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The sense of smell is driven by a powerful and intricate biological system that has evolved over millions of years.</q></aside></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.onotes.com/" target="_blank">onote</a>, as such scent-embedded mail is known—originated at <a href="http://www.lelaboratoire.org/en/" target="_blank">Le Laboratoire</a> in Paris as a picture of a plate of macaroons and a glass of champagne, and was tagged via an iPhone app called oSnap, with the elements—tropical fruit, cocoa beans and champagne—that comprised their aroma.</p>
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<p>When played on an oPhone—the device designed to decode scent-embedded messages—the aroma was, well, undeniably smelly, if a tad muddled. A hint of chocolate was there; something sort of fruity came through; the champagne would have been hard to detect without knowing what to smell for. Did it evoke wine and cookies? Not really. But, to its credit, the gadget worked.</p>
<p>"When you play all three scents at once, it's sometimes hard to determine what you're smelling," says <a href="http://www.seas.harvard.edu/directory/dedwards" target="_blank">David Edwards</a>, Harvard professor of idea translation and co-inventor of the device with Rachel Field, a former Harvard student.</p>
<p>While potential users can currently download the app for free from the Apple app store, there's no way yet for them to play their aromatic missives without going to an oPhone-equipped hotspot. Starting on July 12, and continuing for three consecutive weekends, the museum will host a hotspot in New York where people can come and retrieve the onotes they've been sent. There will be other hotspots in Paris and Cambridge, with more to come.</p>
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<p>Since tagging photos with scent is a skill that few people have yet mastered, the museum will also host free "scent adventures," where an olefactorially-skilled expert — a chef, a coffee connoisseur, or a chocolatier, for example —- will coach aroma newbies in how to compose a scent that resembles what they're smelling. The app itself comes with a vocabulary of "notes"—green vegetation, grilled bread, onion, jasmine, cedar, for example—that allows users to compose more than 300,000 different scents. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Instead of tagging pictures of food, the first users tagged pictures of beaches, gardens, and one picture of a fat man with a baby resting on his belly.</q></aside></p>
<p>While Edwards envisions his invention being a boon to businesses where scent is important, the early response to his product has shown interest in unexpected areas. Instead of tagging pictures of food, the first users tagged pictures of beaches, gardens, and one evocative picture of a fat man with a baby resting on his belly, tagged "meaty."</p>
<p>Scent aficionados will eventually be able to send their smelly pictures via Facebook and Twitter, as well as email. "Since your nose loses its sensitivity to scent after a relatively short period, it's better for an aroma to be detected in the short term," Edwards says. "Your nose is made for olefactory Tweets."</p>
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<p>For its part, the museum is enthusiastic about the potential for using scent as part of the visitor experience. "The sense of smell is driven by a powerful and intricate biological system that has evolved over millions of years," says Michael Novacek, the museum's provost for science.</p>
<p>Over the years, humans have traded olefactory sensing for better vision, but while we're less adept at sensing various aromas than, say, dogs or gorillas, we're still able to discriminate between millions of different olefactory stimuli. That presents rich possibilities for enhancing exhibitions—or just triggering memories.</p>
<p>"In humans," Novacek says, "the olfactory bulb is part of our brain's limbic system, which is closely associated with memory and feeling."</p>
<p>That's why, like the taste of Proust's Madeleine, a momentary whiff of a scent can bring on a rush of powerful memories and emotions.</p>
<p>The technology behind the platform is still in development, and is being funded, at least in part, by an <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ophone-duo" target="_blank">indiegogo campaign</a>. Sign up by June 19, and for $149, you get an ophone Duo (with two scent receivers; an "Uno" model for your pocket will come later), a pack of "foodie" chips and a pack of base notes.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3031990http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031990/first-transatlantic-scent-message-sends-smell-of-paris-to-new-york?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031990/first-transatlantic-scent-message-sends-smell-of-paris-to-new-york?partner=rss#commentsTue, 17 Jun 2014 21:00 +0000American Museum of Natural HistoryDavid Edwardsonotesophoneosnapscent emailVapor CommunicationsInnovationHarvard Professor To Send The World's First "Scent Message" Across The Pond<p>On Tuesday morning, at Manhattan's <a href="http://www.amnh.org/" target="_blank">American Museum of Natural History</a>, Harvard Professor and CEO of Vapor Communications, David Edwards, will hit the send button on his iPhone, and an email photograph tagged with the quintessential smell of New York—Pizza? The halal food trucks on 6th Avenue? The stench of horse piss on Central Park South?—will be delivered to a colleague in Paris, completing the first ever TransAtlantic transmission of a scent message.</p>
<p>The message, called an oNote, will be composed via an iPhone application called oSnap, soon to be available for free download in the Apple App store.</p>
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<p><br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>It's the dream of every middle school boy who envisions sending fart bombs in math class.</q></aside></p>
<p>At <a href="http://www.lelaboratoire.org/en/" target="_blank">Le Laboratoire</a>, a contemporary art and design center in central Paris, Christophe Laudamiel, a perfumer and fragrance chemist, will download Edwards's smell-o-gram via an oPhone, a device designed to decode tagged oNotes and render them into scents. Ledaumiel, in turn, will send a Paris-scent tagged message—champagne? Chanel No. 5? Steak au poivre?—back to Edwards and his co-inventor, Rachel Field, in New York, where the Museum's own oPhone will decode and deliver.</p>
<p>It's Edwards's goal to have scent-tagged images available soon via email, Facebook, and Twitter within a network of hotspots in New York, Cambridge, and Paris that have iPhones capable of receiving them. "Scent is the world's natural tweet, because it takes just a few seconds to get a scent," he says. "The notion of people saying, "I miss you in New York," by sending a scent is really interesting and powerful. Or imagine taking a scent selfie and posting it on Facebook."</p>
<p>The oSnap app enables the creation of scents through an aroma vocabulary, which appears via a scrolling window. There are 32 unique scents users can combine into some 300,000 permutations.</p>
<p>If, for example, Edwards decides to send his Parisian friend the smell of a New York pizza, he may tag the photo with the scents "tomato," "cheese," "pepper," and "onion."</p>
<p>The scent is then delivered via chips in the oPhone receiver similar to printer cartridges. When air is spun over them, the scent is released. The aroma is designed to last for about 10 seconds. If the photo is tagged with more than one scent, the scents will play in chronological order, so the phone has time to clear the previous aroma.</p>
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<aside class="pullquote"><q>The technology could be used to educate the Natural History Museum's visitors on the evolution of smell. </q></aside>
<p>Initially, Edwards is focusing on foodie vocabularies. "In the near term, we'll go where there are obvious business applications—places where the quality of aroma is associated with the quality of the product or experience," he says, like coffee or bread.</p>
<p>The company's "coffee bliss" vocabulary, for example, will be tested with coffee customers at <a href="https://plus.google.com/%2BCOUTUMECafeParis/about?gl=us&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">Coutume cafes</a> in Paris.</p>
<p>On June 17, <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vapor-communications-unveils-new-form-of-communication-aromatic-messaging-application-platform-and-device-258131241.html" target="_blank">Vapor Communications</a> will launch an Indiegogo campaign to finance production of the first commercial oPhones. They'll be available for pre-sale, to be produced and delivered in early 2015, for a retail price of $149 (a 25% discount on the expected sale price of $199).</p>
<p>For its part, the Natural History Museum is intrigued by the technology's potential to enhance exhibits and to educate visitors on the evolution of smell. Imagine, for example, a dinosaur exhibition infused with the scent of a Jurassic swamp—or the smell of a T. Rex.</p>
<p>The Museum will host a hotspot during three weekends in July along with hands-on activities about how smell is processed in humans compared to our primate and hominid relatives.<br />
<br />
While inventors for years have tried to figure out how to transmit scent via email—the dream app for middle school boys who envision sending fart bombs in math class—the technology has never managed to overcome the peculiar challenges of scent; its tendency to linger in a space foremost among them. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Scent is the world's natural tweet, because it takes just a few seconds to get a scent.</q></aside></p>
<p>In the late 1950s, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision" target="_blank">Smell-o-Vision</a> battled with <a href="http://filmusik.com/smell-o-vision-vs-aromarama/" target="_blank">AromaRama</a> for domination of theaters. Both failed. More recently, Japanese, French, and Israeli companies have attempted to enter the market with a variety of devices, with little success.</p>
<p>But if anybody's likely to find a way to commercialize aroma transmission, it may well be Edwards, a serial entrepreneur with a variety of intriguing projects on his bio. Edwards is the mad scientist who invented <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662775/meet-david-edwards-the-mad-scientist-behind-smokable-chocolate-and-plant-based-air-filters-s" target="_self">smokable chocolate</a>, air-cleaning plants, <a href="http://url=http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679388/in-the-future-you-will-eat-your-food-packaging-and-it-will-be-delicious" target="_self">edible food packaging</a>, <a href="http://blog.fastcompany.com/post/23109165262/omg-this-exists-inhalable-alcohol-gives-an" target="_self">inhalable alcohol</a>, and a <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670253/shaped-like-a-cell-this-daypack-holds-a-liter-of-water" target="_self">cell bag for carrying water</a> in developing countries.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.seas.harvard.edu/directory/dedwards" target="_blank">Edwards</a>, who holds the provocative title of Professor of Idea Translation at Harvard, is an engineer with the DNA of Willy Wonka. If this latest experiment takes off, he's ready for the follow-up: the world's first oBook, a project he's been envisioning for 17 years, that will come complete with a scent track that will let you smell the hero's adventures as the story unspools.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3031865http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031865/harvard-professor-to-send-the-worlds-first-scent-message-across-the-pond?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031865/harvard-professor-to-send-the-worlds-first-scent-message-across-the-pond?partner=rss#commentsFri, 13 Jun 2014 11:30 +0000David Edwardsdigital scent technologyLe Laboratoireonotesophoneosnapscent messagingVapor CommunicationsInnovationWith Glittering New Set Design, CCTV News Takes Aim At The World <p>When the new set for CCTV's Nightly News debuts later this spring, in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/arts/design/koolhaass-cctv-building-fits-beijing-as-city-of-the-future.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">Rem Koolhaas's iconic tower</a>, nearly half of China's population will be tuned in to see the swoopy screens and ultra high-res LED technology that will vaunt China's favorite newscast into the forefront of broadcast design.</p>
<p>The sets, which feature columns and a serpentine desk wrapped in-high res screens, are designed around the latest in LED technology, which uses 2.5 mm pixels. Prior to this project, the highest resolution screens featured four mm pixels (by comparison, outdoor rock concert screens or those in Times Square have 10 to 12 mm pixels). <br />
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<p>"Screens with 2.5 mm pixels are unbelievably crisp, and very, very expensive," says New York set designer Jim Fenhagen.</p>
<p>American broadcast technology has yet to catch up to this standard—but will, as Fenhagen and his team from Jack Morton Worldwide download what they learned from their high-profile project. "We definitely grew a lot," he says. "This will eventually make its way into American design."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/58026/telly-visionary" target="_self">Fenhagen</a>, senior vice president of design at Jack Morton Worldwide, has long been the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tischler/jim-fenhagen-the-master-o_b_825282.html#s242568title=Piers_Morgan_Launches" target="_blank">go-to guy in America's broadcast fraternity</a>. With nearly 20 Emmy's littering his home office, Fenhagen can claim credit for some of America's most iconic TV environments, from <em>The Colbert Report</em> and <em>The Daily Show</em> to <em>Good Morning America</em>, from <em>Martha Stewart</em> to the NBA for TNT, from the Golf Channel to CBS's <em>The NFL Today</em>. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Money wasn't the main issue. They wanted an international style, not a Chinese look.</q></aside></p>
<p>The Chinese tapped Fenhagen and his crew after a global search for a team that could catapult their broadcast into the ranks of other international news leaders. "They wanted to be on a par with the BBC, CNN, and Sky News—to be cutting-edge, and to be an equal," says Fenhagen back in New York after a grueling pre-New Year's run-up to the project's deadline. "Money wasn't the defining issue. They wanted the most contemporary tools and an 'international style,' not a Chinese look." <br />
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<p>It didn't hurt Fenhagen's case that he had been the designer behind the Sky News set, and that Jack Morton already had an office in Beijing. But the Chinese still put him to the test before awarding the CCTV contract, hiring him to design a bureau in Nairobi, Kenya, to see if the Jack Morton team could understand the nuances of Chinese culture, and could operationally pull off a set design far from its New York headquarters. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>CCTV's 'Nightly News' has an audience of some 500 million people. The Super Bowl has just 108 million.</q></aside></p>
<p>When that project ended successfully, complete with a hand-off featuring an African and Chinese drum ceremony, Fenhagen went into high gear. The stakes were high. CCTV's "Nightly News" has an audience of some 500 million people. Not bad, when you think that NBC's <em>Nightly News with Brian Williams</em> recently celebrated its best week since the 2012 Olympics with a paltry <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/category/evening-news-ratings" target="_blank">10.7 million</a> viewers. Even Super Bowl 2013, one of the highest rated TV programs ever tracked, garnered a limp <a href="http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2012/story/_/id/8913211/2013-super-bowl-falls-short-television-ratings-record" target="_blank">108.4</a> million viewers.</p>
<p>More complicated set elements were built in New Jersey and shipped to China, when it became clear that the expertise to pull off the entire project wasn't available locally. And it quickly became apparent that no other assumptions should go un-tested. "Things we'd take for granted—like electricity power loads—were initially inconceivable," he says.</p>
<p>Given the building's fraught history (a hotel, attached to the CCTV building <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/world/asia/10beijing.html" target="_blank">caught fire</a> in 2009, killing one firefighter and injuring seven others), fire codes, requiring that everything be shut down at night, proved a sticking point. Typically, LED systems, which last forever, are never shut down. Much negotiation ensued.</p>
<p>While cutting-edge technology was a goal, any overt Chinese design elements weren't. "It took us a long time to figure out what they wanted," says Fenhagen. "We offered them designs referencing Chinese culture, but they were rejected."</p>
<p>Instead, Fenhagen says, the Chinese team, overseen by Mr. Sun Yusheng, vice president of CCTV and the Chinese equivalent of Roone Arledge, responded to more subtle design cues. "There was a point where we realized that certain shapes appealed to them. Much of modern design is based on right angles, which we've used a lot. But when we showed them that, they didn't like it."</p>
<p>"The circle shape, however, really resonated, given its symbolic meaning of prosperity, the ongoing cycle of life, yin and yang," he says. The whole set is built on a tracking platform that allows viewers to peer through a glass wall into a newsroom where 70 people work. <br />
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<p>In addition, each decision needed consensus to move forward, a cultural curve ball that ripped through schedules and kept producers in a state of high alert to try and meet deadlines, while juggling 13-hour time zone differences.</p>
<p>Early in the process, Fenhagen and his team, lead by senior designer Andre Durette, realized that the social aspects of the collaboration were as critical to the project's success as the design. <br />
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The Chinese wanted to catapult their broadcast into the ranks of other international news leaders.</q></aside></p>
<p>"At work, it's all very business-like," Fenhagen says, "but then in the evening there were many dinners, always featuring a series of toasts about relationships and trust, and how our cultures could get to know each other and overcome obstacles."</p>
<p>And, of course, there were gifts, an important part of Chinese culture. Fenhagen received an elaborate tea set and a book of calligraphy. In return, he brought uniquely American presents: a Ralph Lauren tie, books of NYC images from the Metropolitan Museum, baseball memorabilia.</p>
<p>International audiences will be able to see Fenhagen's work later this spring, when the International News Network goes live around the globe for people who want to watch the news in Chinese, and from a perspective you won't find on CNN.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3024980http://www.fastcodesign.com/3024980/with-glittering-new-set-design-cctv-news-takes-aim-at-the-world?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3024980/with-glittering-new-set-design-cctv-news-takes-aim-at-the-world?partner=rss#commentsTue, 21 Jan 2014 13:00 +0000cctvChinaJack Mortonnightly newsRem Koolhaassuper bowlBehind The Scenes With The Judges: Transportation<p><strong><h2><a name="Our_Judges">Our Judges</a></h2></strong></p>
<p>Gadi Amit, New Deal Design<br />
Sarah Stein Greenberg, Stanford d School<br />
Karl Heiselman, Wolff Olins<br />
Noah Robischon, <em>Fast Company</em></p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="The_Finalists">The Finalists</a></h2></strong></p>
<p><strong>Uber:</strong> The disruptive data-driven app that rethought how you hail a cab by providing an on-demand town-car service<br />
<strong>Tesla Model S:</strong> A new kind of luxury: the first all-electric sports car<br />
<strong>Mars Curiosity Rover:</strong> NASA's mobile laboratory on the Red Panet takes space exploration to new heights<br />
<strong>#UseMeLeaveMe:</strong> Creative agency Razorfish launched a fleet of GPS-equipped bikes that tweet their location for last year's South by Southwest Interactive festival<br />
<strong>Scoot Networks:</strong> San Francisco's shared network for Vespa-like scooters<br />
<strong>Cadillac ATS:</strong> The 2013 sport sedan rethinks an old, once-stodgy brand</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="The_winner_Uber">The winner: Uber</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p>The jury in the transportation category had an especially difficult challenge: judging entrants as diverse as the Mars Rover, with its astonishing level of innovation but uncertain business impact, to efficiency apps like Uber that were less impressive design-wise but had the potential to hack an entire industry. And then, of course, there was the issue of Tesla, the electric vehicle that everyone agreed was a mind-blower but was still a car for the 1%. What to do? Listen in, while they argue the merits:</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Cadillac_ATS">Cadillac ATS</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Gadi Amit:</strong> The ATS is a very important move for Cadillac. It's the first time an American car company has matched German luxury. I think there's something to cars just being able to be good and beautiful.</p>
<p><strong>Karl Heiselman:</strong> I agree the Cadillac would be a better vote than Mercedes [another entrant], but they both seem to be styling stories.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> Cadillac really changed its whole marketing approach, and to some degree that's a pinnacle attempt for it to become fresh again because of its dynamics and quality. It's an amazing achievement for Cadillac.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="UseMeLeaveMe">#UseMeLeaveMe</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Amit:</strong> They were launched at a large event at SXSW. The idea was you release a vehicle out in the wild, with no controls, and rely on the public and some psychological manipulations (like giving each bike its own personality) to get it going. It had a lot of humor, and they embraced an emotional bond. Typically, transportation has been managed or created by people who are avoiding emotional connections between people and objects. They had some interesting results.</p>
<p><strong>Sarah Stein Greenberg:</strong> It was more of a PR activity than a business.</p>
<p><strong>Noah Robischon:</strong> Razorfish was behind it.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> Sarah makes a good point regarding scalability and business. That's a big no-no for me. In that case, the Mars Rover will be judged the same way.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> Part of the goal with these awards is hinting at what the new edge should look like. I think there's room for both as long as we're going to be nimble within that category.</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> We're not a magazine that only writes about a company because of its financial underpinnings; we're more interested in the innovation factor.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> With UMLM, you see the next wave of putting individual personalities in products. Conceptually, it's so much richer than other options. What were the learnings of the experiment?</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> They made it sound successful. They said one bike got stolen or was misplaced, and it started tweeting, "Don't be a jerk." And there was a mini mob wondering what would happen to that bike.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Mars_Curiosity_Rover">Mars Curiosity Rover</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> In terms of business impact, Mars Rover is igniting interest in space, competitiveness in space and going to Mars.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> I don't see it. It's a scientific instrument for me. There's an unbelievable amount of innovation embedded in it, and so on, but I'm having difficulties with it being in the transportation category. It's somewhat outside the sphere to me.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> I think it's part of the dawn of a more privatized space industry. You could make the argument that solving these kinds of problems is not just relevant to science but to the business community as well.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Why are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Larry Page investing in space if there's no business impact?</q></aside>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> I'd love to touch it and play with it. But it's not a vehicle, and I have a serious issue with applying business thinking or matrix onto scientific exploration. It's putting scientific exploration in a very tight bind. It's the opposite end of #UseMeLeaveMe.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> With the Rover, I felt like there was a tremendous achievement made under the most extraordinary pressure you could imagine. That was not about business impact, obviously, just in terms of how does innovation happen.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> If this thing were to crash, it would be humiliating. But if the Cadillac ATS got in trouble, we would see millions of people walk home without paychecks.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> I think there are real questions now about government-funded future space exploration, and this was an important win for NASA.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> I just think NASA should be outside the business discussion.</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> So why are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Larry Page investing in space? If there's no business impact, then why? I'm trying to reconcile that.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> With Elon Musk, it's clear he thinks he can do it way better and cheaper than a government agency. There are some institutions in life that are not supposed to go through the metrics of business. He thinks he can do it faster than NASA.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Tesla">Tesla</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Amit:</strong> It's an amazing car, connected to web and digital and so on. To my taste, it's a little too big, it's a little bland on that level. Being the first of its kind—an all-electric car that performs to that level—is really unheard of. Car companies die left and right; it's one of the most complicated things to do. For 20, 30, 40 years, the U.S. has been berated for failing to meet the expectations of what the Germans or Japanese are doing. And it's green! Just an unbelievable story.</p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> If you read the description of it and then see it, it's a little disappointing. But just the fact that you can wirelessly update the entire car is pretty amazing. The technical achievements are amazing.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> It's building out a new model for the whole charging infrastructure.</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> The rapid increase in demand has created lithium mining problems in terms of just getting the stuff out of the earth as quickly as possible.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> The future is where things become a lot more complicated. We don't know how the oil economy will function 20 years from now. It has no replacement. But sources for electricity are diverse. In Denmark, the local utility company is a partner. Eventually, you should be able to use the car as a giant battery in your home to power up your TV or whatever. In 30 years, things will actually change and the ability to create alternative energy is incredibly important.</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> The Model S is much more accessible than the Roadster. It's important that we're something that's more consumer accessible.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> It's reasonably priced. Obviously, it's a luxury car, but $70,000 to $80,000 is not that expensive in this neighborhood.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> It seems like it's in the sweet spot of what the awards are trying to do.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Uber">Uber</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> Uber demonstrates such clear disruption, but the app itself is so much less of a pleasant design experience than the Tesla dashboard.</p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> Even though Uber is small scale, it's made a massive difference, at least in New York. It's a small innovation that has a big impact on daily life. It's affected lots of people's lives. I see it as having massive impact without massive investment.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>I think it's great that just an app can hack an entire industry.</q></aside>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> Uber doesn't have the most elegant design ever. But the Tesla price point does bug me in terms of what we're rewarding. I like the possibility for a product to touch many people.</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> A few years from now, this will be the norm for getting a cab.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> The good thing is any taxi gets it. You're absolutely right, there's a revolution coming to this whole industry.</p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> I think it's great that just an app can hack an entire industry.</p>
<p><strong>Stein Greenberg:</strong> I read that the number of people getting drivers' licenses is declining as a rite of passage. I lived in New Delhi, where the trajectory of everyone owning a car is so much more terrifying; the trajectory should be more about shared resources. I would want to point to those and herald that.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> I don't think Uber would survive in any rural areas. Tesla has improved, and they make strong statements that they're going to go down in price. It's a little bit of a philosophical idea: transportation versus cars. It's really about, Do you take transportation as a utility, or an emotional experience of a journey? People still think of the car as the object that gives an emotional journey. That's something we shouldn't forget. Uber is an efficiency app, but I don't know how awesome an experience it is.</p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> I think it's an awesome experience when I think about hours looking for a cab in San Francisco, or walking miles or staying at a friend's house. It doesn't have to be an either/or. Maybe on the weekend you rent a car, and then you have an experience.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> I have the Uber app, and I used it once or twice, but it didn't blow my mind. I could have picked up the phone and called a limo just as well.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Scoot_Networks">Scoot Networks</a></h2></strong></p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> In a world where cars are all cartoons of themselves and pumped up on steroids, Scoot has a sweetness to it. It's a technology using a simpler, lower tech. It's entirely affordable.</p>
<p><strong>Robischon:</strong> I love the phone-based approach. To make it so central was really fascinating.</p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> Even just down to the video, it had a sweetness to it.</p>
<p><strong>Amit:</strong> It's very much a Zipcar model. I don't think the level of innovation matches the others.</p>
<p><strong>Heiselman:</strong> I would never design the objects the way they are, but it was quite nice to see someone have an overall expression and projection unlike most of the cars. All of them take themselves so seriously in some way that feels out of touch, whereas Scoot has a humility.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3019848http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019848/innovation-by-design/behind-the-scenes-with-the-judges-transportation?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019848/innovation-by-design/behind-the-scenes-with-the-judges-transportation?partner=rss#commentsTue, 05 Nov 2013 19:00 +0000#usemeleavemecadillacGadi Amitinnovation by design awardsKarl HeiselmanMars RoverNew Deal Designsarah stein greenbergscoot networksTesla Model StransportationUberInnovation By DesignBehind The Scenes With The Judges: 2-D Design<p><strong><h2><a name="Our_Judges">Our Judges</a></h2></strong></p>
<p>Robert Andersen, Square<br />
Evan Sharp, Pinterest<br />
James Sommerville, Coca-Cola<br />
Linda Tischler, <em>Fast Company</em></p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="The_Finalists">The Finalists</a></h2></strong></p>
<p><strong>American Airlines:</strong> The airline giant's first rebranding since Massimo Vignelli created the iconic logo 40 years (with a new cabin look to follow) <br />
<strong>Geothermal Heat Pump Manual:</strong> A Pentagram-designed guide to alternative energy sources, for New York homeowners<br />
<strong>Little Sun:</strong> Artful branding for solar-powered lamps, by creative agency Wolff Olins and in collaboration with the artist Ólafur Elíasson <br />
<strong>Making Policy Public:</strong> Graphic guides that break down the ins and outs of New York's complicated municipal codes<br />
<em><strong>USA Today:</strong></em> A new logo and brand identity for the stagnant newspaper, also by Wolff Olins</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="The_winneri_USA_Todayi">The winner:<em> USA Today</em></a></h2></strong></p>
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<p>The judges in the graphic design category grappled with a range of entries that fell into two very different buckets: On the one hand, there were a variety of candidates that tried to simplify esoteric topics for a mass audience. On the other, was a group of rebranding projects for big, iconic companies whose identities had grown tired and outdated.</p>
<p>While the discussion was spirited, the goal was clear: The winner would need to be fresh, compelling, and durable, and have a clear business impact.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Geothermal_Heat_Pump_Manual">Geothermal Heat Pump Manual</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Robert Andersen:</strong> The thing I love about this entry is that it takes something that should be completely uninteresting and hard to understand but makes it fun, easy to digest, and easy to look at it—even if you don't want to install a geothermal heat pump. It's really well executed, and in terms of being valuable, it's something that will help people figure out how to install more sustainable energy in New York.</p>
<p><strong>Evan Sharp:</strong> I studied architecture, so I have some exposure to how complicated these systems are, how process heavy, and how much investigation you have to do upfront. They packaged something daunting and complex and unfamiliar into a design that felt very simple and educational.</p>
<p><strong>James Sommerville:</strong> This entry felt like something I would get from a utility company, and on the flipside, like an expensive piece of design. Does it need to be that big? However, they took a somewhat scary subject and did a fresh job, with some humor in there as well. Overall, I thought it was clean but not groundbreaking.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="iUSA_Todayi"><em>USA Today</em></a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Sharp:</strong> I thought this was a very impressive work. The rebranding struck a perfect balance between feeling contemporary and timeless.</p>
<p><strong>Sommerville:</strong> The redesign feels fresh and punches out to people who really don't want to read traditional newsprint. There's always a danger with things like this, that it looks like it dressed in the dark a bit, with a little too much going on. The circle iconography in some areas felt a little bit forced—like, OK, we need to come up with an idea to fit this circle.</p>
<p><strong>Andersen:</strong> I was never drawn to <em>USA Today</em> as a piece of editorial. But it almost looks like they took a lot of what is interesting about websites, with sections that have personality and identity, and made this pretty successful. It feels like taking a little piece of the web along with you. For a dying print industry, that's not uninteresting. As far as business impact, it's a Hail Mary pass. You either alienate all the people you have, or you attract a whole different audience.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="American_Airlines">American Airlines</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Andersen:</strong> Like newspapers, airlines are fighting for their lives. American's former branding (by design legend Massimo Vignelli) was famous and iconic. The design snob in me is like, "Oh, the other one was classic," but in terms of getting people on airlines, American needs to be on the same page as Virgin America, which is kind of eating everyone's lunch. When you rebrand something, you have to ask: Is this just a new typeface, or replacing the eagle with something more friendly? Are we putting on a new coat of paint, or lipstick on a pig? My main takeaway is that this is a very attractive rebranding.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>it's going to look terrible in 10 years, and laughable in 20.</q></aside>
<p><strong>Sharp:</strong> I like the new livery, not the old. But watching the video I had an allergic reaction to their language. I don't know if it's better or worse. Probably worse, given how timeless the other one was.</p>
<p><strong>Sommerville:</strong> I think it's like the flag: There's an immediate recognition there. And I like the spin on the stars and stripes—it almost feels like the flag after it's been through a wind tunnel and the paint still isn't dry. I like that feeling of the engine, the drag factor, the movement—like it's been somewhere and it's about to take off again. From a wider view of visual identity, I could see how this could have wide reach with brand touch points. But I don't think it will have longevity.</p>
<p><strong>Andersen:</strong> I think it's pretty interesting for what it takes right now to be a hip new brand again. But it's going to look terrible in 10 years, and laughable in 20. American had a timeless logo that lasted for a long time versus something now that will be out of fashion in five years.</p>
<p><strong>Sommerville:</strong> But I don't think we live in a world where brands will really achieve that again.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Now it's like, 'I just want to be hammered on the plane, and I can't wait to get off.'</q></aside>
<p><strong>Andersen:</strong> That's true. And you have to remember, the old logo was from the era of the 1960s, when even commercial pilots were heroes, and you were like, "Yeah I'm going to get on an airplane with the talons! Now it's like, "I just want to be hammered on the plane, and I can't wait to get off."</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Making_Policy_Public">Making Policy Public</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Sharp:</strong> I believe that this project really fulfills the potential of design. It takes complex, arcane, inhumane language—the municipal code of New York—and makes it accessible to the audience most in need of understanding it. I know how impactful it's been for groups in the city. But the design suffers from a lack of consistency. People are handed these on the street so they would have a little more authority if they could see the brand or mark.</p>
<p><strong>Andersen:</strong> Like some of the other 2-D projects we've seen, this has high potential to really change the discourse about politics and local governments. Also, people within the community are helping to design these. It's an interesting exercise of democracy.</p>
<p><strong>Sommerville:</strong> My only problem with this project is that it's low on the beauty score, meaning there's a danger it could be forgettable. From a pure branding perspective, it wouldn't be as high up on the beauty or memorability score as some of the other ones.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Little_Sun">Little Sun</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Sharp:</strong> The Little Sun branding is clean, elegant, and simple, but I didn't feel the identity itself had the 2-D communication that we saw in Making Policy Public.</p>
<p><strong>Andersen:</strong> I kind of agree with that. The impact of the product itself in Little Sun is the most inspirational. I love the photo, and the logo itself is so easy and adaptable you can paint it on a wall and people know what it means. But the branding is not the show stopper; it's the product itself and what that does for people.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3019844http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019844/innovation-by-design/behind-the-scenes-with-the-judges-2-d-design?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019844/innovation-by-design/behind-the-scenes-with-the-judges-2-d-design?partner=rss#commentsWed, 16 Oct 2013 20:30 +0000American Airlinescoca-colaEvan Sharpgeothermal heat pump manualinnovation by design awardsjames sommervillelittle sunmaking policy publicPinterestRobert Andersensquareusa todayInnovation By DesignBehind The Scenes With The Judges: Products<p><strong><h2><a name="Our_Judges">Our Judges</a></h2></strong></p>
<p>Jake Barton, Local Projects<br />
Joe Gebbia, Airbnb<br />
Stephanie Wu, Warby Parker<br />
Linda Tischler, <em>Fast Company</em></p>
<h2><a name="bThe_Finalistsb"><strong>The Finalists</strong></a></h2>
<p><strong>Leap Motion:</strong> Three-dimensional gesture-control technology that could replace the computer mouse<br />
<strong>Oru Kayak:</strong> A flat-pack kayak suited to cramped city living.<br />
<strong>Dyson Airblade Tap:</strong> A faucet and dryer in one, for a cleaner public-restroom experience.<br />
<strong>Automatic:</strong> A smartphone-enabled driving assistant for greater gas efficiency.<br />
<strong>The Ice Record Project:</strong> An album that poetically melts as it plays, by the band the Shout Out Louds.<br />
<strong>Lapka:</strong> iPhone accessories that can sense if your environment is healthy (or not).<br />
<strong>Makey Makey:</strong> A circuit-board invention kit that can turn (almost) anything into a mouse and keyboard interface.<br />
<strong>Nike Vapor Laser Talon Cleat:</strong> The first 3-D-printed football cleat, weighing in at 5.6 ounces<br />
<strong>Smile Makers:</strong> Cheeky vibrators for women, based on four erotic characters.</p>
<h2><a name="bThe_Winner_Leap_Motionb"><strong>The Winner: Leap Motion</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Judges in the product category struggled as they weighed ideas with big potential and slender track records versus solid products that were less ambitious but got the job done. Along the way, they took time to salute projects that likely had small business impact but were intriguing solutions to everyday problems—from storing bulky sports equipment in small apartments to selling feminine pleasure devices in family-friendly stores.</p>
<p><strong>Oru Kayak</strong></p>
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<p><strong>Joe Gebbia:</strong> I might actually consider buying one of these. There's something nice about the lightness of it. I'm used to seeing cars go by with roof racks, and you look at them and think, Oh yeah, I want to get a kayak, but I need to get a roof rack. This product has kind of sparked something. It actually isn't that much weight on your shoulders.</p>
<p><strong>Stephanie Wu:</strong> In terms of rethinking ways people use or transport a kayak, not only is it really good looking and super functional, but it couldn't be put in a tiny package.</p>
<p><strong>Jake Barton:</strong> How do we think about this in terms of business impact? I don't think I'm leaping to conclusions to say the kayak market isn't a big part of the U.S. economy. I have a love/hate thing with the twee aspect of kayaking around an urban space. It feels like an elitist sliver. It's a game changer in a recreation market, but not in the real world.</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> Quite apart from the product itself, this entry shows how the role of video is really transforming things. You see this thing on the water, and the narrative quality really makes it for me.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Lapka">Lapka</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Gebbia:</strong> What inspired me the most, when I saw this, is how beautifully they merged these online/offline experiences, striking a beautiful relationship between physical and online worlds. It got my brain thinking, Wow, what else can we measure? What else would we be intrigued to measure? The execution of the hardware is phenomenal. The plastic, the wood, the cord. The little details.</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> I think it was the best example of an app. At its core it takes an essential ephemeral, digital experience, then wraps it in a body or carriage, and then wraps that in another digital container which is the storytelling that surrounds it.</p>
<p><strong>Linda Tischler:</strong> What if it starts measuring things that we find alarming in our environment?</p>
<p><strong>Gebbia:</strong> I think that's what they intend to do. They just updated the app, and they're starting to aggregate data.</p>
<p><strong>Tischler:</strong> That means it has potentially a big impact in ways that are yet to be realized.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Dyson_Airblade_Tap">Dyson Airblade Tap</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Gebbia:</strong> I was so delighted by this. If you look through the lens of innovation, here's a company and design team that several years ago addressed the issue that anyone who's gone into a public restroom faces: they made the Airblade. It leap frogged over those horrible blowdryers that were already in restrooms. And now I love how they've outdone themselves again.</p>
<p><strong>Wu:</strong> This is functional, very original, very innovative, and has a clear business impact.</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> Part of the problem with Dyson, if we're thinking in terms of the top prize, is that this is not even close to Dyson's most impactful work. It feels like a minor leap forward in the general Dyson oeuvre. The Airblade and vacuum cleaner, and then his fan as well. They're totally beautiful, engineering based, and functional, but there's something about it to me that feels like a tweak. Still, that's cool, and it's amazing to see a top designer continue to improve himself.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Automatic">Automatic</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Gebbia:</strong> This team designed a bridge between a smartphone and a car, two objects where there was kind of a one-way conversation before, and now the car can communicate back to you. If you ever talk to a Prius driver, one of the consistent things they say is that their driving behavior has changed because of the live feedback. What I appreciate is that this has allowed anybody—even those without a Prius—to adopt that behavior.</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> The fact that it's not embedded in the car makes me skeptical. The Prius gets a group of people who care, but the number one design thing they got right is making the object in your vision and ever-present. I was thinking about this product with a certain skepticism because if it's your phone, you're not supposed to be looking at it while you're driving.</p>
<p><strong>Wu:</strong> I'm not sure what actionable things the driver should be doing?</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> It's an interface problem. It's an opt-in thing for what should be an ambient thing. The Prius works well because it's installed.</p>
<p><strong>Tischler:</strong> But not everyone can afford a Prius, so this would give them the opportunity for that functionality for much less money.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Smile_Makers">Smile Makers</a></h2></strong></p>
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<img src="//d.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/10/3019765-inline-smilemakers.jpg" alt=""/>
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<p><strong>Barton:</strong> I thought the campaign was really cute. Within the American world, it's hard to imagine how to make this type of a product that is appealing and direct but not strange.</p>
<p><strong>Tischler:</strong> it's not being ghettoized into Babes in Toyland. It's going to be in Sephora, which is not as sleazy as if you're sneaking up to the second floor somewhere in the East Village. The retail distribution strategy is a great idea.</p>
<p><strong>Wu:</strong> It's a product that's always been behind the curtain, and they said they can reveal the functionality. They're taking over a space that traditionally has been very taboo.</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> I'm impressed that they've taken something that's been marginalized, and turned it into something that could live at a Target or CVS. That's pretty powerful. Politically, its lack of apology for female sexuality is pretty impressive.</p>
<p><strong>Gebbia:</strong> The packaging design is so strong, I caught myself thinking about giving this as a gift. Then I was like, wait, what?</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="The_Ice_Record_Project">The Ice Record Project</a></h2></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Barton:</strong> It's such a crazy outlandish experiment that's working, and if I were GE, there's a lot to learn. It's such a boutique piece.</p>
<p><strong>Wu:</strong> The packaging is gorgeous, and it's a smart way to engage.</p>
<p><strong>Gebbia:</strong> I love the conceptual nature behind it.</p>
<p><strong><h2><a name="Leap_Motion">Leap Motion</a></h2></strong></p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> Leap is kind of strange in some ways, and to comment hinges on a lot of things: It's a little hard for me to distinguish between this as product or interactive, because it's clearly packaged as a product and its experience is digital/interactive. Having said that, the Leap at this point has a lot of promise, but it's very unclear how much utility is coming out of this. If gesture-based interfaces have significant functional impact, the Leap is right there.</p>
<p><strong>Wu:</strong> I completely agree. There have been so many poorly done ones in the past. If it works really well, there's so much potential. There are so many other things that could build off it and use the technology and it seems like a tool for others.</p>
<p><strong>Barton:</strong> Relative to other the contenders, the promise of reinventing the mouse is everything these awards are about.</p>
<p><em>Did the judges get it right? Weigh in below.</em></p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3019765http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019765/innovation-by-design/behind-the-scenes-with-the-judges-products?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019765/innovation-by-design/behind-the-scenes-with-the-judges-products?partner=rss#commentsFri, 11 Oct 2013 17:30 +0000Airbnbautomaticdyson airbladeice record projectinnovation by design awardsJake BartonJoe GebbiajudgeslapkaLeap MotionLocal Projectsmakey makeyOru kayaksmile makersstephanie wuWarby ParkerInnovation By DesignDynamic Duos: PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi And Mauro Porcini On Design-Led Innovation <p><strong>Indra Nooyi,</strong> <em>CEO </em><br />
<strong>Mauro Porcini,</strong> <em>Chief Design Officer</em></p>
<p><strong>Nooyi:</strong> When I first came to PepsiCo, every time we talked about products for women, people would just put it in a pink bag, or put on a pink label. It was puzzling because if you could take any product and put it in a pink bag and it became appealing to women, that says a lot about women's intelligence. And I wondered: Is the idea of catering to a certain cohort just about putting the product in an appropriate color or adding a couple of flowers, or a field, or a farm?</p>
<p>Second, they said the product they were introducing was for women, but I remember thinking: I can't imagine eating this product! Or drinking out of the bottle.</p>
<p>And I thought: Whoa! We have a problem in how we think about innovation, not just in terms of form function—the package it's going to be put into—but how it's going to be used and all the way back to the early stages of the value chain.</p>
<p>After we got through the economic decline of 2008-2010, we knew we needed an in-house design studio, where designers would work side by side with innovators and marketers to reengineer the DNA of this company. That's what led us to Mauro. I didn't look at his shoes. I wanted to know if he shared the same philosophy as I did, or would he say, "I can change all your packaging." I discovered that if I was at a certain level of thinking, Mauro was way ahead of me. I realized he could pull the organization to a place we should have been in the first place.</p>
<p><strong>Porcini:</strong> When I heard Indra had already tried to raise the awareness in the company of what design really was, I thought, this is perfect. PepsiCo was already successful, so the potential to take it to the next level through design was there. But every time you try to infuse a new culture into a very successful and efficient organization, it's going to try to reject the new. You need the sponsorship of the CEO.</p>
<figure class="inline-large inline">
<img src="//f.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/08/3016310-inline-i-1-179-duos-pepsico-indra-nooyi-and-mauro-porcini.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Mauro Porcini and Indra Nooyi</figcaption>
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<aside class="pullquote"><q>it's important to have a culture that doesn't punish you.</q></aside>
<p><strong>Nooyi:</strong> A few months ago, we had a senior management meeting with our top 200 to 300 people, talking about our biggest messages. Mauro spoke about design-led innovation for two hours. Right now, I'd say design is front and center on everybody's minds. When people come in to show me something—a product design or something—I always ask, "Is Mauro's team in the process?" I'm definitely the enforcer, and I was the evangelist, but now there are many more evangelists in the company.</p>
<p><strong>Porcini:</strong> It's important to have a culture that doesn't punish you if you make, eventually, a mistake. It's part of the innovation process. I always joke, saying, "What scientists call experiments, marketers call failures or mistakes."</p>
<p><strong>Nooyi:</strong> Market growth alone doesn't give you enough tailwind. You have to create your own. The way to do that is by designing products for consumers that wow them. Not just the way they look, but that every aspect of what they buy delights them.</p>
<h3><a name="On_Market_Research_Listen_to_Your_Customers_Dont_Believe_Them">On Market Research: "Listen to Your Customers. Don't Believe Them."</a></h3>
<p><strong>Porcini:</strong> Indra and I are really on the same page when it comes to marketing research. In many corporations, marketing research is heavily used to validate rather than to generate insights to drive innovation. You need both, and it's an iterative process. You generate insights, you start to prototype, you validate, you tweak again, you generate more insights, you validate again. This is important to the process. <br />
<br />
<strong>Nooyi:</strong> I believe deep consumer insights are really important. What are the needs consumers have, what their dissatisfactions are with existing products, and what kinds of trade-offs they are willing to make to satisfy each of the needs? Today, with online, you can collect a lot of data, and you can mine the data in so many ways. At Mauro's suggestion, we're trying to embed the design people so early in the process so they're working side by side with cross-functional teams. Innovation's not one person's responsibility.</p>
<p><strong>Porcini:</strong> You've heard me say, many times, "Listen to your consumers. Do not believe them." Interpret what they say. It's the fine balance between understanding insights, coming from people in general, then balancing that with leadership and decision-making that is coming from the company. People won't give you the solution. You need to observe them, understand them, then make arbitrary decisions and invent for them. It's that fine balance that is so subjective and qualitative and is difficult to define. That's why you need amazing thinkers in the different functions that together work to drive innovation in the company.</p>
<p>Entrepreneurship and innovation implies risk. Variability is where the magic is, where the unexpected happens, where potential mistakes get transformed in innovation.</p>
<h3><a name="Three_Days_in_Milan_and_I_am_the_Design_Expert">"Three Days in Milan and I am the Design Expert!"</a></h3>
<p><strong>Nooyi:</strong> I told Mauro: I want to go to the Milan design show. Mauro's an insider. Everybody knows him and he knows everybody. They revere him. I'd never been to the show before. There's design everywhere in the world, but Milan lives and breathes it; design is in every pore. Everywhere you go, there are unique experiences, and you look at something and you think: Why didn't I think of that? There were things there like, God, this is an interesting way to show coffee. Every aspect of what we saw spewed out design cues or design innovation, or design every which way. I was like a sponge soaking it up, saying, "Why didn't I come to this before?"</p>
<p><strong>Porcini:</strong> I wanted to show Indra how design can impact brands, products, services, in any category. And it's all about the full experience. When you go to Milan, you breathe it, you just feel it, you don't need any explanation, you just experience it wherever you go and whatever you do. You don't even need to talk.</p>
<p><strong>Nooyi:</strong> As a result, I've become even a greater enforcer! [raised voice] Three days in Milan, and I am the design expert, guys! You will NOT do anything until you check with Mauro!</p>
<p><strong>Be one of the design professionals on an intimate, first-peek tour of Pepsi's Design Lab with Mauro Porcini at <em>Fast Company</em>'s <a href="http://fastcodesign.com/ibd" target="_self">Innovation By Design Conference</a> on October 2 in New York. For a full schedule of events and speakers, go <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/section/innovation-by-design-conference" target="_self">here</a>.</strong></p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Read more pairings from <em>Fast Company</em>'s 10th Annual Innovation By Design issue:</strong><br />
<ul>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016252/new-york-city-bloomberg-and-janette-sadik-khan" target="_self">Michael Bloomberg and Janette Sadik-Khan On The Future Of Walking, Biking, Driving</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016299/j-crew-libby-wadle-and-Jenna-Lyons" target="_self">J. Crew's Libby Wadle And Jenna Lyons On Tension</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016327/burberry-angela-ahrendts-and-christopher-bailey" target="_self">Burberry's Angela Ahrendts And Christopher Bailey On Trust</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016357/airbnb-brian-chesky-and-joe-gebbia" target="_self">Airbnb's Brian Chesky And Joe Gebbia On Design Running The Boardroom</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016330/flipboard-mike-mcCue-and-marcos-weskamp" target="_self">Flipboard's Mike McCue and Marcos Weskamp On Spiraling Toward Solutions</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016332/jawbone-hosain-rahman-and-yves-behar" target="_self">Jawbone's Hosain Rahman And Yves Béhar On The Power Of Trust</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016304/nike-mark-parker-and-john-hoke" target="_self">5 Ways Nike Factors Design Into Its Innovation Equation</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016361/pinterest-ben-silbermann-and-evan-sharp" target="_self">The Role Of Design At Pinterest</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016312/samsung-boo-keun-yoon-and-dong-hoon-chang" target="_self">Samsung On Global Design Influences</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016313/design-50/dynamic-duos-5-brilliant-business-lessons-from-warby-parkers-ceos" target="_self">5 Brilliant Business Lessons From Warby Parker's CEOs</a></span></li>
</ul>
[<em>Photograph by Andy Ryan</em>]</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/3016310http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016310/pepsico-indra-nooyi-and-mauro-porcini?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016310/pepsico-indra-nooyi-and-mauro-porcini?partner=rss#commentsMon, 23 Sep 2013 14:30 +0000Indra NooyiMauro PorciniPepsipepsicoLeadershipDesign 5014. Ken Lerer <h3><a name="The_NewMedia_Mogul">The New-Media Mogul</a></h3>
<p>When the guy who either cofounded, incubated, or invested in the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Warby Parker thinks he has a sure thing, you listen. "News providers have forgotten the 18-to-40 demographic," says Ken Lerer, explaining his excitement over <a href="http://www.nowthisnews.com/" target="_blank">NowThis News</a>, his new-media startup. "They're going to get their news on mobile, through video, and from friends. Period." NowThis News runs like old-school MTV, packaging cheap pickup footage with VJ commentary. "This is not about being cute," he says, adding that he'd hire a reincarnated Edward R. Murrow in a second. So much for slow-jamming the news.</p>
<p>[<em>Image courtesy of NowThis News</em>]</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3009231http://www.fastcompany.com/3009231/most-creative-people-2013/14-ken-lerer?partner=rss
http://www.fastcompany.com/3009231/most-creative-people-2013/14-ken-lerer?partner=rss#commentsMon, 13 May 2013 10:00 +0000Most Creative People 2013Joi Ito's Plan For Urban Innovation: "Let A Thousand Weirdos Bloom"<p>Ever since Richard Florida published <a href="http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/books/the_rise_of_the_creative_class" target="_blank"><em>The Rise of the Creative Class</em></a>, back in 2002, urban planners have been hot to find the secret key to unleashing innovation (and its attendant jobs) in their cities.</p>
<p>Is it all about attracting <a href="http://career-advice.monster.com/job-search/company-industry-research/the-gay-index-diversity-boosts-busi/article.aspx" target="_blank">gays</a> (perhaps Florida's most newsworthy prescription at the time. What a difference a decade makes!)? Artists? Techies? And, more importantly, if a city doesn't already have a home-base of such "creatives," what can city fathers do to attract it?</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Find your own weirdos, and figure out how to amplify them.</q></aside>
<p>Joi Ito, the director of MIT's famed <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Media Lab</a>, has a different idea: Find what talent already exists in your city, the more iconoclastic the better, and then nurture it without big-footing it in the process. In other words, "Find your own weirdos, and figure out how to amplify them," he says, riffing on Richard Pascale's theory of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Power-Positive-Deviance-Unlikely-Innovators/dp/1422110664" target="_blank">positive deviance</a>.</p>
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<p>In a preview of his keynote speech at the four day, New Museum-sponsored <a href="http://www.ideas-city.org/" target="_blank">Ideas Cities 2013 conference</a> in New York, Ito says there's no "one size fits all" template for urban innovation. What worked in San Francisco's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_Market%2C_San_Francisco" target="_blank">SoMa area</a>, or Cambridge's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square" target="_blank">Kendall Square,</a> might not work in Minneapolis or Macon.</p>
<p>What's more, the very effort to attract such talent by building infrastructure in advance, may well backfire, raising costs and destroying the vibe. "Look at New York," he says. "If you have an area where established businesses have gone away, costs will go down, and entrepreneurs will move in. Scuzzy kids don't need much space anymore, they just need a network and a place with a critical mass of energy to self-organize. Infrastructure comes later."</p>
<p>As technology and the internet have lowered the cost of innovation and expressing yourself creatively, the ability of small groups of people to have a big impact has increased, he says.</p>
<p>"The barrier now isn't lack of money," he says, "it's lack of permission. Untapped capital gets unlocked when authority gets out of the way and lets people do what they would do if given potential and the context in which to do it."</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The barrier now isn't lack of money, it's lack of permission.</q></aside>
<p>That Untapped Capital—the theme of the conference—may not be simply the next wave of tech entrepreneurs. They may be Brooklyn pickle purveyors. Or urban farmers in Detroit. In short, home-grown talent that just needs space and an indulgent municipal government willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional zoning violation.</p>
<p>This hands-off approach is inherently frustrating to planners who are eager to help. "The natural tendency of planners is to fund stuff," Ito says. "But by doing so, you often change the nature of it."</p>
<p>He compares it to meditation. If you're thinking about meditating, you're not meditating. Similarly, "if you're thinking about creating a space for emergence, for the unlocking of bottom-up capital, you're not going to do it by deploying capital. Even by sitting in a conference room, talking about it, you're deploying capital."</p>
<p>In Ito's words: back off and let it emerge on its own.</p>
<p>That's not to say a city can't be a facilitator. It should focus on doing what it's supposed to be doing anyway: providing street lights, fighting crime, keeping up the roads and transportation infrastructure, and so on. That's been the problem cited by many <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3007840/creative-conversations/how-young-community-entrepreneurs-rebuilding-detroit" target="_self">fledgling entrepreneurs in Detroit</a>.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>The natural tendency of planners is to fund stuff. But by doing so, you often change the nature of it.</q></aside>
<p>But "in mature cities, where you already have basic infrastructure, people are looking for space more than they're looking for help," he says.</p>
<p>Still, Ito says, sympathetic government may well have a role to play. "A lot has to do with the character of the city, the character of the people, the character of the mayor," he says. "I've seen mayors and city councils do a good job of understanding their cities if they're close to the people." In short, if they can make it easier for their own weirdos to thrive by letting them do what they do best, then they're doing the right thing.</p>
<p>But if the city is run by bureaucrats insistent on running a buttoned-up operation, in the pockets of developers and well-funded entrepreneurs, Ito says, "they should just get out of the way."</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1681959http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681959/joi-ito-s-plan-for-urban-innovation-let-a-thousand-weirdos-bloom?partner=rss
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681959/joi-ito-s-plan-for-urban-innovation-let-a-thousand-weirdos-bloom?partner=rss#commentsWed, 01 May 2013 13:00 +0000ideas for citiesjoi itoCitiesCoke Appoints A New Design Czar<p>After a year-long search for a new VP of Global Design, Coca-Cola has chosen James Sommerville, co-founder of the British design firm <a href="http://www.attik.com/discipline/branding/" target="_blank">Attik</a>, who has a reputation for revitalizing brands including Virgin, Adidas, Sheraton, Heineken, and, most memorably, Coca-Cola. He succeeds <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/design/2009/featured-story-david-butler" target="_self">David Butler</a> (a Fast Company Master of Design in 2009), who was promoted in January to Coca-Cola's vice president of innovation.</p>
<p>"Coca-Cola's Liquid &amp; Linked marketing communications agenda has, at its heart, powerful design, that ultimately creates brand love and brand value," says <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1793521/disrupters-working-outside-business-norm" target="_self">Wendy Clark,</a> SVP of the company's Global Sparkling Brand Center.</p>
<p>"And speaking of brand love and brand value," she went on, "the addition of James to our team does just that—adds more love and more value from someone who already knows us deeply. There's no better feeling than having someone join the team who already feels so much a part of it. Just as he has done until now, James will create immediate impact for our brands, company, and system."</p>
<p>Sommerville led the team behind Coca-Cola's massive redesign of Coke's brand identity in 2006, a initiative tagged "revival of an icon" internally. That project undid years of haphazard branding following a globalization effort that had given local marketers creative license to interpret the brand, resulting in a chaotic design language.</p>
<p>"When I came," Butler said in 2009, "people realized that they had a business problem. They just didn't know it was a design problem."</p>
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<p>Under the supervision of Butler and Todd Brooks, Coke's group director for global brands, Attik created a cleaner, simpler global brand identity for Coke that followed Atlanta's directive to make every element, whether packaging, point of sale, or equipment reflect "bold simplicity, real authenticity, and the power of red—Coke's signature color. The identity was also supposed to be "familiar yet surprising."</p>
<p>The design brief, Sommerville told <em>Fast Company</em>, was "basically about decluttering through design. "It was about bringing simplicity to the language, about the bold use of the iconic bottle, a flat red, and a flat script…Core brands need a timeless quality."</p>
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<p>That effort led to a formidable global standards book that spelled out, in excruciating detail, every element of the design, from the swirl down the side of the can (the "dynamic ribbon" in Coke parlance) to what models can wear in photo shoots.</p>
<p>Attik was subsequently tapped for Coke's massive design effort around 2010's FIFA World Cup, the largest single event Coca-Cola had ever undertaken. <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1652227/designing-world-cup-coke-taps-vuvuzelas-and-knaan-inspiration" target="_self">Attik's visual identity campaign</a>, a boldly colored montage of African symbols, began with a tour of South Africa to get all the elements right.</p>
<p>"The symbols are unique: the vuvuzelas (the popular long, trumpet-like instruments), the peace symbols, and the mouths representing singing," Sommerville told us in 2010. "The visual identity language was created to capture of the joy of every fan's 'inner African.'"</p>
<p>One of Sommerville's first assignments at Coca-Cola will be to develop a global visual design system for the Rio 2016 Olympics, a familiar project, since he previously was responsible for the company's work on the <a href="http://www.designboom.com/design/mwm-graphics-and-attik-london-2012-olympics-coca-cola-branding/" target="_blank">2012 London Olympic Games. </a></p>
<p>Sommerville founded Attik in 1986, in his grandmother's attic, with a £2,000 startup grant from the UK's young people's charity The Prince's Trust. It went on to establish offices in Leeds, London, New York, San Francisco, Sydney, and Los Angeles. In 2007, Attik was sold to Dentsu. <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/09/11/attik-co-founder-james-somerville-walks-away-dentsu-agency-after-26-years" target="_blank">Sommerville left Dentsu</a> in September 2012, after fulfilling his five-year commitment to the company. Most recently, Sommerville has been leading a creative agency, Bonafide Guests Only (BGO).</p>
<p><em>Linda Tischler is currently writing a book on Coca-Cola's design strategy. </em></p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/1672428http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672428/coke-appoints-a-new-design-czar?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672428/coke-appoints-a-new-design-czar?partner=rss#commentsThu, 25 Apr 2013 12:38 +0000attikcoca-colaDavid ButlerDesignFIFA World Cupvp global designDesignUsing Data To Treat Cancer And Drive Innovation <p>Kathy Giusti founded the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation after being diagnosed with the disease in 1996. As head of worldwide operations at a major pharma company at the time, she was horrified by the lack of drugs in the pipeline for her deadly "orphan" cancer. John Quackenbush is the director of the Center for Cancer Computational Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and CEO of the startup <a href="https://www.genospace.com/" target="_blank">GenoSpace</a>, which provides tools for genomics research. Senior editor Linda Tischler sat down to hear about their new collaboration to upend cancer research.</p>
<p><strong>Fast Company: Kathy, how are you feeling?</strong><br />
<strong>Kathy Giusti</strong>: I'm happy to say that I am in remission. That <em>R</em> word is something critically important to cancer patients, especially in a disease like myeloma. But I never lose sight of the fact that there is another <em>R</em> word called relapse.</p>
<p><strong>Has your work at the foundation helped you defy the odds?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: In 15 years, we've raised $225 million, sequenced the myeloma genome, and opened 45 trials of 23 drugs—six approved by the FDA—which have doubled the life span of multiple myeloma patients. I've taken both Velcade and Revlimid, which we helped develop. But I was also incredibly fortunate to have an identical twin sister who was the donor for my stem-cell transplant. The combination of those things really helped me.</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>Two or three years down the road, tens of thousands of patients could become part of this large data resource, and help drive innovation.</q></aside>
<p><strong>John Quackenbush</strong>: It also helped that you were a pharma insider and knew what did and didn't work. Often, what's most important is being able to figure out where the problems are and work around them.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: The number-one problem is that data is kept within the walls of the academic centers and within companies.</p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: We've created a culture in research where we don't want to share data, where the incentive is not to make it available to anybody who could use it effectively. It's not a community striving toward a solution.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: If patients knew this, they would be beside themselves. The system and the incentives are really, really broken.</p>
<aside class="sidebar right"><div class="sidebar-inner"><h2><a name="Cancers_Lethal_Funding_Gap">Cancer's Lethal Funding Gap</a></h2>
<p><span class="subhead">The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and Genospace are pooling data to boost r&amp;d in rare cancers and overcome the shortfall in funding.</span></p>
<p><strong>MOST COMMON CANCERS (more than 100,000 new cases a year):</strong><br />
<u>Breast</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $625<br />
Survival Rate*: 89%</p>
<p><u>Lung</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $297<br />
Survival Rate*: 16%</p>
<p><u>Prostate</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $288<br />
Survival Rate*: 99%</p>
<p><u>Colorectal</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $265<br />
Survival Rate*: 64%</p>
<p><strong>RARE CANCERS (fewer than 50,000 new cases a year):</strong><br />
<u>Pancreatic</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $99<br />
Survival Rate*: 6%</p>
<p><u>Liver</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $66<br />
Survival Rate*: 15%</p>
<p><u>Multiple Myeloma</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $55<br />
Survival Rate*: 41%</p>
<p><u>Stomach</u><br />
Annual Funding (in millions): $13<br />
Survival Rate*: 27%</p>
<p><em>*Five years after diagnosis<br />
Source: The National Cancer Institute </em></p></div></aside>
<p><strong>What are the incentives?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: In the academic world, it's publication, promotion, and grant funding. Sharing data dilutes your ownership and recognition. On the commercial side, it's who can file the patent, get the drug to market, and hold the exclusive rights for the longest period of time. In both cases, people realize that, especially with rare cancers, the populations of patients they have access to are not big enough, but they're afraid to share data. The truth is, people have published a lot of garbage that hasn't had a big impact on clinical care. The studies tend to be too small, and there aren't easy ways to replicate them because you don't have access to the samples and the data.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: The hardest part of launching CoMMpass [a 10-year study involving 50 cancer hospitals to collect and analyze genomic data from 1,000 multiple myeloma patients and target treatments based on each patient's unique genomic markers] was that if you wanted to participate, you had to be willing to give up intellectual property. We had a lot of trouble getting the academic medical centers to agree. But the community centers that don't have to publish started enrolling.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, John was building a system that lets researchers securely analyze raw genomic and clinical data. <br />
Quackenbush: When we first approached Kathy, we were thinking about two things. The first was that the data from sequencing a human genome is so large. Your genome is 3 billion bases long. [Base pairs are the building blocks of the DNA helix.] It's a tremendous amount of data, not something for an Excel spreadsheet.</p>
<p>The second thing is that your genome is uniquely yours. We have this myth in biological research that we want anonymous data. Well, guess what? Once I have your genome, you're no longer anonymous. But that genome is much more valuable if I know who you are, what treatment protocol you're under, and if I can follow up with you over the years. We realized we would need to encrypt that data so that researchers could extract only the information they need in a very secure way, just like your bank.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: So we spent two years amassing gorgeous, pristine data on myeloma patients, but what's the point if people aren't using it? We needed a way to put all of the data into a system so that researchers, clinicians, and bioinformatics specialists could use it. Late in our search for a partner, we saw what GenoSpace was doing and went, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing, amazing technology."</p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: It was like <em>The Graduate</em>—we ran to the church.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: John was intensely patient-focused and willing to talk about the barriers that we saw too. That was really important to us. We believe the power is shifting to the patient.</p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: We're now in a beta test, downloading this great data.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: We'll launch in late summer or early fall.</p>
<p><strong>What's the incentive for cancer centers to participate?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: The director of the multiple myeloma program at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York said the initiative is leveling the playing field, meaning that many centers can now get up to where a Dana- Farber or the Mayo Clinic is.</p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: Also, we are coming to understand that cancer isn't just a disease of a particular tissue. It's a molecular disease. And drugs that work in myeloma may work in colon cancer or breast cancer, if you have the right mutations.</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: In myeloma, we found the BRAF gene [which, in its mutated form, causes cancer]. We were surprised to also find BRAF in melanoma. So all of a sudden, you've got a discussion going on between a myeloma group and a melanoma group. That's the world of oncology moving forward: It won't really matter what kind of cancer you have anymore. What's really going to matter is what you look like genomically.</p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: So two or three years down the road, tens of thousands of patients across the country could become part of this large data resource, and help drive innovation. What we're doing is putting in place the incentives for other diseases to join, right?</p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: Exactly. Now imagine all cancers doing this. Imagine the network we're creating and the conversation we're creating.</p>
<p><strong>Has there been pushback?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Giusti</strong>: [Laughter] Oh, endless. This has been a nightmare. I always say, the greatest cost of leading is the cost of paving the way.</p>
<p><strong>Quackenbush</strong>: If you think about the scientific revolutions that have occurred in history, they've been driven by one thing—the availability of data. From Copernicus to quantum mechanics, it's data that drives innovation.</p>
<p>[<em>Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien</em>]</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3007768http://www.fastcompany.com/3007768/creative-conversations/using-data-treat-cancer-and-drive-innovation?partner=rss
http://www.fastcompany.com/3007768/creative-conversations/using-data-treat-cancer-and-drive-innovation?partner=rss#commentsMon, 15 Apr 2013 10:00 +0000Creative ConversationsMIT's New Self-Assembly Lab Is Building A Paradigm Shift To 4-D Manufacturing
<aside class="info"><div class="info-inner"><p>Skylar Tibbits, a <a href="http://www.ted.com/pages/ted2011fellows" target="_blank">2011 TED fellow</a>, is presenting his project at this year's <a href="http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/" target="_blank">TED conference</a>. He previewed his work for <em>Fast Company</em> last week in his new lab, which is filled with art installations that hint at the epiphany that led to his obsession with self-assembly.</p></div></aside>
<p>Sitting on a table in <a href="http://architecture.mit.edu/faculty/skylar-tibbits" target="_blank">Skylar Tibbits</a>'s lab, at MIT's new <a href="http://www.sutd.edu.sg/idc.aspx" target="_blank">Center for International Design</a>, is a 200-gallon-fish tank—it's large enough to hold one of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living" target="_blank">Damien Hirst's pickled sharks</a>. If Tibbits's experiment goes according to plan, within the next few weeks, it will be the scene of a sort of fractal monster movie. A 50-foot-long strand of coded mystery material will be dumped into the water-filled tank, and transform—without benefit of human hands!—into a sweet little 8-inch square <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve" target="_blank">Hilbert curve</a>.</p>
<p>How long will it take? Nobody knows.</p>
<p>"It will probably depend on how hot the water is, or if I add a little salt," jokes Tibbits, the 28-year-old wunderkind architect-designer-computer scientist behind what may be the next wave in manufacturing: 4-D printing.</p>
<p>The concept of self-assembly isn't new: It has been used at nanoscale for years. But Tibbits is an architect. Sure, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_origami" target="_blank">folding proteins</a> is cool, he thought, but imagine if you could use this technology to build bridges and buildings—or even just pipes? Now, that would be a totally different dimension of cool. "I thought, 'If you can't see it, why do it?'" he says. "I wanted to go larger scale."</p>
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<p>On the wall is a large aluminum and polyethylene structure called a <a href="http://www.sjet.us/MIT_VOLTADOM.html" target="_blank">Voltadom</a>, bent into curves that mimic a vaulted ceiling. Along the edge of each piece is a series of tiny bolts, holding the whole thing together. It's a tiny section of a larger, 30-foot long, artwork that Tibbits constructed for <a href="http://mit150.mit.edu/exhibition" target="_blank">MIT's 150th anniversary</a> in 2011. The structure required somewhere north of 5,000 bolts. It took Tibbits and his team of worker bees nearly a month to assemble the object the Olde School way, that is, piece by piece, by hand.</p>
<p>Sometime during that long, tedious project, Tibbits experienced what any manual laborer invariably thinks: There must be a better way.</p>
<p>But Tibbits is no ordinary grunt. His bio extends from being one of <a href="http://www.zaha-hadid.com/" target="_blank">Zaha Hadid</a>'s hive of young architectural renegades to being the co-teacher of the architectural section of MIT professor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gershenfeld" target="_blank">Neil Gershenfeld</a>'s popular "<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/01/30/how_to_make_almost_anything/" target="_blank">How to Make (Almost) Anything</a>" class. So he was in a unique position to figure out how to make something make itself.</p>
<p>After meeting molecular biologist Arthur Olson, Tibbits began experimenting with 3-D printing and embedded magnets, designing pieces that would self-assemble if you added energy—shake a beaker full of little pieces and the parts inside assemble themselves into a 3-D model of a polio virus. The results were impressive, but still pretty labor-intensive.</p>
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<p>Then, a few months ago, Tibbits mentioned his frustration to some of the folks at Stratasys, one of the industry leaders in <a href="http://objet.com/3d-printers/connex" target="_blank">3-D printing</a>. Fortuitously, they had just developed a <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3006259/ghost-new-material" target="_self">breakthrough new material</a> that transforms in water, they said. Would he like to try it?</p>
<p>Now, he could print his structure on a 3-D printer, submerse it in a tub, and it would expand. If it was programmed correctly, it would self-assemble into a pre-determined shape while he watched.</p>
<p>Tibbits was psyched. He began tinkering in his shop. Using the new material, he designed and printed a long strand of pieces, using <a href="http://www.autodeskresearch.com/groups/nano" target="_blank">Autodesk's Cyborg software</a> then dunked it in a tub of hot water. Before long, the <a href="http://vimeo.com/59185591" target="_blank">strand had wiggled its way into spelling out the initials of his alma mater, "MIT." </a></p>
<p>Then he turned a strand into the first angles of a Hilbert curve. On the second iteration, he got it to be a bit more complicated. Soon, he hopes, he can code the algorithm necessary to get the whole thing—a 3-D labyrinth that grows, on its own, into a precise and complex object.</p>
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<p>If Tibbits succeeds, he says, the implications are vast. Imagine if this technology could be used to <a href="http://www.geosyntec.com/UI/Default.aspx" target="_blank">construct pipes</a> that could expand or contract based on their contact with water. They might get bigger to accommodate the runoff from a hurricane, then contract when the emergency is over. Imagine pipes that could bend—but not break—during an earthquake.</p>
<p>Imagine being able to ship parts for structures to countries where unskilled laborers are the only help available, so they can assemble themselves. Imagine how this might work in the case of disaster housing or refugee camps. Transformers without Borders!</p>
<p>Imagine if that desk you bought from Ikea could assemble itself, while you kicked back and watched the game.</p>
<p>In Tibbits's mind, the applications are endless. "This allows us to give materials a life," he says.</p>
<p>In the future, he hopes to move beyond water to other energy triggers: light, heat, even sound. And he's attempting to 4-D print two-dimensional surfaces that self-fold like origami, as well as 3-D shapes that can transform from one object into another.</p>
<p>"I think we are just scratching the surface of what's possible in the future with 4-D printing and the capability to have physical objects transform in precise and designed way," he says.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3006145http://www.fastcompany.com/3006145/mits-new-self-assembly-lab-building-paradigm-shift-4-d-manufacturing?partner=rss
http://www.fastcompany.com/3006145/mits-new-self-assembly-lab-building-paradigm-shift-4-d-manufacturing?partner=rss#commentsTue, 26 Feb 2013 12:00 +00004-D printingautodeskCyborg softwareMIT Center for International DesignSelf-AssemblySkylar TibbetsstratasysTechnologyStratasys's Programmable Materials: Just Add Water
<aside class="info"><div class="info-inner"><p>Skylar Tibbits, a <a href="http://www.ted.com/pages/ted2011fellows" target="_blank">2011 TED fellow</a>, is presenting his project at this year's <a href="http://conferences.ted.com/TED2013/" target="_blank">TED conference</a>. He previewed his work for <em>Fast Company</em> last week in his new lab, which is filled with art installations that hint at the epiphany that led to his obsession with self-assembly. <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3006145/mits-new-self-assembly-lab-building-paradigm-shift-4-d-manufacturing" target="_self">Read more about his Self-Assembly Lab here</a>.</p></div></aside>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing" target="_blank">3-D printing</a>, with its potential for near-limitless flexibility, speed, and cost-savings has captured the imagination of designers and manufacturers alike. But what if a designer could program his or her object to keep evolving once it was out of the printer? What if it could assemble itself into something quite different in response to a jolt of outside energy—or, better yet, from certain environmental triggers?</p>
<p>That's the brave new world of 4-D printing—which has the potential to upend manufacturing as we know it.</p>
<p>Researchers at <a href="http://objet.com/" target="_blank">Stratasys</a>, the Minneapolis-based 3-D printing firm that recently merged with Israel-based Objet, have recently developed a new, programmable material that may pave the way to making this next leap in innovation a reality. Their proprietary material (so new it doesn't even have a name, outside of internal technical code) not only lets designers create cool new objects, but will enable them to teach their artifacts to dance—or at least self-assemble on command.</p>
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<p>The company's education department is providing academic researchers like MIT's Skylar Tibbits with material that has the ability to be programmed down to the various particles of the design. The qualities that can be coded include color, transparency, stiffness, and flexibility. But Stratasys's newest breakthrough is to add water absorption to that list of traits.</p>
<p>And that element has the ability to change the game dramatically.</p>
<p>Using the firm's sophisticated <a href="http://objet.com/3d-printers" target="_blank">Objet Connex 3-D printers</a>, researchers can now combine a <a href="http://objet.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/Objet_Materials_Brochure.pdf" target="_blank">variety of materials</a>—rubber, plastics, etc. with the new water-absorbable one—and code them, optimally via dedicated software simulators like <a href="http://area.autodesk.com/mudcom/showcase_wip/cyborg-1" target="_blank">Autodesk's Cyborg</a> tool or the <a href="http://www.voxcad.com/" target="_blank">VoxCad</a> simulator, to behave a certain way. Then they can print them out, and test how they respond to various environmental triggers.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3006145/mits-new-self-assembly-lab-building-paradigm-shift-4-d-manufacturing" target="_self">Tibbits's research</a>, for example, is focusing on how the material changes when it's dunked in a tank, or sprayed, with the goal of self-assembly. While the experiments currently are fun to watch, as strands squirm their way into the shape he's coded them to form, the implications are more than just a parlor trick. Potentially, the material may open the way to a new, low-energy, method of manufacturing.</p>
<p>"Generally speaking, to activate self-assembly you always need to use a source of energy, like mechanical energy," says Shelly Linor, Stratasys's director of global education.<br />
<br />
"What is interesting about Skylar's project is that the energy comes from water absorption and that opens a path to environmental manufacturing, creating geometries that can change when exposed to different environmental conditions—in this case , water or humidity," she says.</p>
<p>Linor says the material was developed only for research purposes and is not yet available commercially.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3006259http://www.fastcompany.com/3006259/stratasyss-programmable-materials-just-add-water?partner=rss
http://www.fastcompany.com/3006259/stratasyss-programmable-materials-just-add-water?partner=rss#commentsMon, 25 Feb 2013 19:12 +00004-D printingSelf-AssemblySkylar TibbitsstratasysTechnologyMIT Builds An Open-Source Platform For Your Body<p>Siberian temperatures. Eleven grueling days, navigating rough terrain. Six teams, matched for talent, competing for glory at the end. The <a href="http://iditarod.com/" target="_blank">Iditarod</a>? Nah, just the annual <a href="http://newmed.media.mit.edu/health-and-wellness-innovation-2013" target="_blank">MIT Health and Wellness Hackathon</a>.</p>
<p>This isn't your average social app-fest. The goal is to jump-start an open source platform where apps that track all different aspects of your bodily health can exchange information. It's a Sisyphean task, since most digital health solutions today are trapped in silos, but the organizers believe they can change that by enfranchising big companies instead of trying to disrupt them.</p>
<h3><a name="Healing_The_Health_Industry">Healing The Health Industry</a></h3>
<p>"The tradition in health care technology is, 'This is our device, we make our own software,'" says Dr. John Moore, who organized the hackathon. "The goal is to connect that bit of knowledge to the rest of your health experience. Just keeping track of your step count, for example, won't let you change the rest of your life."</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>"Just keeping track of your step count, for example, won't let you change the rest of your life."</q></aside>
<p>To unify the segmented market for health technology takes heavy lifting on the engineering side, since much of the progress made by private companies hasn't been shared back to the community. Here, each team is required to use open source and open standard tools so that things work together seamlessly: specifically, the Lab's patient-centered <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/1465/collaborhythm" target="_blank">CollaboRhythm</a> platform and the <a href="http://indivohealth.org/" target="_blank">Indivo X</a> system for personalized health records.</p>
<p>"Working from a common platform takes an extra effort to build," Moore says, "but it ensures that the prototype will be something that has legs." With Boomers aging and a lack of innovation coming from industry, the upside for these projects could be huge—but undertaking them is intimidating. "We thought we'd have to reject people," says Moore, "but instead we just scared them off."</p>
<h3><a name="Hacking_Together_Industry_Partnerships">Hacking Together Industry Partnerships</a></h3>
<p>The teams encamped on the Media Lab's sixth floor, overlooking a Charles River initially frozen so solid you could stroll over to the Back Bay for pizza. This is the fourth such hackathon sponsored by the Lab's <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/new-media-medicine" target="_blank">New Media Medicine research</a> group; when it started, the competition was 20 mostly MIT students who spent their winter break experimenting with open source innovation platforms for health care. Now the group includes an international assembly of professors, doctors, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as engineers from MIT sponsor companies like MIT sponsor companies like ViiV, Humana, Motorola and Fleury. Still, it's only a start.</p>
<p>"The hackathon itself is not enough to produce change, but it's an opportunity to expose important players in the ecosystem—pharma, insurers, medical diagnostics companies, startup entrepreneurs, consumer electronics companies—to the value of using and contributing to these platforms," says Moore. "It's rare to get these players to converge, but these 80 people are influencers, and now they know each other so they can collaborate. Big innovations will come when they all see how they can benefit each other."</p>
<p>Matched into <a href="http://newmed.media.mit.edu/health-and-wellness-innovation-2013-resources" target="_blank">six project teams</a> before arriving in Cambridge, the groups come at problems from different interests and areas of expertise, then work to create solutions that are more than just one-off apps or devices.</p>
<p>"It would take years for all of these sectors to realize the potential that they have seen unfolding in the two weeks of this event," says Moore. "It is this seed that may lead them to build their products differently and encourage that to collaborate with partners from other sectors using the same tools."</p>
<h3><a name="How_Do_You_Incentivize_ProductReady_Hacks">How Do You Incentivize Product-Ready Hacks?</a></h3>
<p>The focus here is on producing commercially viable products. "Suddenly, you [can] have a really well-rounded tool that can be at the level of sophistication where you can get funding for a startup or a research grant," says Moore. "We make sure the business people are supportive, and not just looking at today's business models.... We squash negativity. That's a big problem in the health space, where innovative ideas are often killed with comments like, 'Nah, nobody will ever get paid for that.' I act as the benevolent dictator to enforce that."</p>
<aside class="pullquote"><q>"We squash negativity. That's a big problem in the health space."</q></aside>
<p>At the Health and Wellness hackathon, the winners aren't rewarded with cash since winning is only the beginning. Kaiser Permanente donated $15,000 to support the teams during development, instead of forcing them to go out-of-pocket to build their hacks. Awarding money to participants helps unshackle some of the crazier ideas; because current medical systems are plagued with legacy software, Moore wants participants to think blue-sky without being too constrained by cost. "We're looking for optimal solutions," Moore says, "more 'greenfield' kind of ideas." (Read on for examples from this year's projects.)</p>
<p>The Lab also provides on-site mentors in the form of software developers, professional UI designers, and video teams to bring projects to fruition. A team member with business experience is attached to each group, but is forbidden from dismissing good ideas that may be promising, but don't have a traditional revenue stream.</p>
<p>By the end of the marathon event, the Charles had thawed, and signs of encouragement were everywhere inside as well, says Frank Moss, a health care entrepreneur and former MIT Media Lab director. Driven by demands from patients and clinicians, he says everyone from the White House to the business community is "saying things we were saying four years ago," around the time of the inaugural Health and Wellness hackathon. Here's wishing the industry a speedy recovery.</p>
<h2><a name="The_Projects">The Projects</a></h2>
<p>Last year's Health and Wellness Hackathon winners, dubbed the Chameleon team, went on to launch a company called <a href="http://www.geckocap.com/" target="_blank">GeckoCap</a> which produces a device for tracking asthma inhaler usage. The company, which was named "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/geckocap-accessory-inhalers-parents-kids-asthma_n_2487212.html" target="_blank">One of the Best Gadgets of CES 2013</a>," is currently raising funds on Indiegogo. Here are some of this year's entrants.</p>
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<h4><a name="hiVIVA">hiVIVA</a></h4>
<p>Adherence to medications is the key to keeping HIV/AIDS patients healthy, but compliance can be a problem. This app uses gaming to encourage users to take their pills. Users begin by uploading a photo they love to the home screen on their cellphone. Each morning, that image starts out fuzzy; the goal of the game is to sharpen it over the course of the day, based on adherence to the patient's medication schedule. The system also gives patients a "virtual pill box" containing images of the actual pills in their regimen, to avoid confusion. Data is simultaneously sent to the patient's physician via Bluetooth, and an accompanying device will eventually allow a patient to easily test his own blood. A prototype is currently being tested in Bangladesh.</p>
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<h4><a name="Beacon">Beacon</a></h4>
<p>The Congestive Heart Failure team built a monitoring device called Beacon that would allow elderly patients with chronic conditions to stay in their homes longer. The device sits in a bedroom and is linked wirelessly to sensors throughout the house. If the sensor determines that the patient is moving less than normal, a light on the top of the main unit will turn yellow—alerting the patient to take her blood pressure, or step on a scale. Sudden weight gain, for example, is a sign that the patient's condition is worsening. Data will be transmitted to the patient's doctor, who can then communicate with the patient to see if a change in medications is called for, or if more serious intervention is required.</p>
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<h4><a name="My_Op_">My Op </a></h4>
<p>This app is designed to help patients who are about to undergo surgery for endometriosis learn about what to expect beforehand without scaring themselves by searching Google for information. Post-operatively, the app helps doctors assess how their recovery is going. The biggest problem, developers say, is that patients with this condition are so accustomed to being in pain that they often don't recognize the severity of their symptoms after surgery, and thus fail to report them to their physicians until they've become acute. The My Op app allows doctors to monitor self-reported symptoms, and either text or have a video chat with patients if symptoms are concerning before they worsen.</p>
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<img src="//h.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/01/3005184-inline-brady-glove-tremo-cup.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>The Brady Glove (left), The Tremo Cup (right)</figcaption>
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<h4><a name="AEON_Healths_Parkinsons_disease_devices">AEON Health's Parkinson's disease devices</a></h4>
<p>This group built a web-based platform to assess and manage Parkinson's symptoms at home, allowing a patient to better control his own condition.</p>
<p>The Tremo Cup, which the patient uses to take medications several times a day, detects tremors, which correlate to how well a medication is controlling symptoms. By monitoring data, doctors can assess how long a medication is working, and if the timing or dose needs to be adjusted. It also allows a patient to see if he can influence the efficacy of the medication by adjusting exercise, food, or sleep.</p>
<p>The Brady Glove has sensors in each finger that allow a doctor to detect Bradykinesia–-the slowness of movement that is a prime indicator of Parkinson's disease. Neurologists can assess the severity of a patient's symptoms by asking him to tap his fingers, open and close his fist, and alter the position of his palm—the classic tests for Parkinson's—then adjust his meds to help control symptoms.</p>
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<h4><a name="Pressure_Free">Pressure Free</a></h4>
<p>This team's goal was to find a way for a patient to track and lower her blood pressure with minimal involvement by a physician. The solution was an app with three integrated devices: a blood pressure cuff that sends data to a dashboard; a Fitbit to measure how much the patient moves; and a container that monitors how many pills are still in the bottle. Forget to take your meds, and the 3-G powered pill bottle will send you a text message reminder without having to sync your device. In addition, the app will allow patients to invite friends to act as motivators, sending messages and videos to encourage compliance. The pill bottle, designed by a company called Adhere Tech, is already in development. <br />
<div class="clearfix clear"></div></p>
<h4><a name="Epicenter">Epicenter</a></h4>
<p>The Epicenter team tackled the problem of controlling epileptic seizures through diet and biofeedback. The Ketogenic Diet app allows patients to track what they eat, measure the ketones they produce, and report side effects to doctors. A Ketogenic diet—high in fat and proteins, low in carbs—has been shown to be effective in controlling seizures, but is tough to follow. This app builds in recipes and meal suggestions, and encourages compliance by giving the patient a visual record of her progress.</p>
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<img src="//a.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/01/3005184-inline-mit-epilepsy.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Epilepsy app (left), epilepsy cap and wrist senor (right)</figcaption>
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<p>Epicenter also created a seizure tracking tool, where the patient can record seizure triggers, log how long the seizure lasted, and document feelings afterward. The patient's doctor can analyze the data and intervene where necessary, and a gaming device using a neurofeedback cap that measures brain currents and a wrist sensor that measures galvanic skin response allows patients to influence their condition via biofeedback.</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcolabs.com/3005184http://www.fastcolabs.com/3005184/mit-builds-open-source-platform-your-body?partner=rss
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3005184/mit-builds-open-source-platform-your-body?partner=rss#commentsTue, 05 Feb 2013 11:14 +0000bodyTechnologyA Plan To Hurricane-Proof New York, With A Ring Of Wetlands<p>In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, there have been a flurry of ideas on how to deal with the prospect that storms of such magnitude may no longer be once-in-a-lifetime events but the most visible manifestation—if you're not a polar bear—of the havoc wreaked by climate change.</p>
<p>Seawalls. Levees. The kinds of things the Army Corps of Engineers typically builds to protect low-lying places like New Orleans just aren't feasible for a place like Manhattan, says Stephen Cassell, the cofounder of New York's <a href="http://www.aro.net/#/projects" target="_blank">Architectural Research Office</a>. "It's hard to predict how bad climate change will be," Cassell says, noting that Sandy's devastating surge was nearly 14 feet, which wasn't even the worst-case scenario. "What if we build a barrier and the surge goes beyond that?"</p>
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<p>Instead, he and his partner, Adam Yarinsky, are proposing a solution that doesn't just address catastrophic scenarios but also New York's long-standing water-management problems. Their idea: A soft grade of wetlands surrounding the island that would buffer the city from storm surge, buttressed by a porous street system built to absorb rainfall and channel it back into the harbor. Water, sewer, gas, and electric services would be relocated to accessible, waterproof vaults beneath the sidewalk.</p>
<p>It's not such a radical idea, given that much of lower Manhattan—which was once hilly—is already flat landfill. "New York has always been transformed by infrastructure projects," Cassell says. "Look at the grid and the subway systems."</p>
<p>His design would address two problems: the damage from flooding, and the havoc wreaked by water hitting the island. "The wetlands would absorb the force of the waves and break them apart before they hit," Cassell says. Plus, it would have the lovely side effect of making New York a much greener city, ringed by lush marshlands.</p>
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<p>Quite apart from hurricanes, the proposal would address another nasty little problem afflicting the city. It's no secret to New York's water-management engineers (but maybe to the flocks of Iron Men triathletes who regularly jump into the Hudson) that the city's 100-year-old sewer system overflows after nearly every hard rain, releasing on average some 500 million gallons of effluent a week, or 27 billion gallons a year, into the river and the harbor.</p>
<p>The ARO solution, which was first proposed as part of MoMA's prescient 2010 <a href="http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/category/rising-currents" target="_blank"><em>Rising Currents</em></a> exhibition, is emerging as one of the most promising of a range of ideas to address the problems that rose to the surface after Sandy. Other proposals include changes in building codes to relocate buildings' electrical systems out of basements and into higher floors, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/31/us/new-york-subway-plugs/index.html" target="_blank">inflatable plugs</a> that could inflate to keep water out of subway and transit tunnels, and rethinking what should be built at all in flood-prone zones like the Rockaways.</p>
<p>Cassell hopes the dialogue will concentrate on intelligent long-term solutions, not superficial fixes. "Post 9/11, the first response to security concerns was to throw up a bunch of jersey barriers," he notes. "We need to model different solutions and not be afraid of big projects."</p>
<p>A number of the proposals are expensive, he concedes, "but the cost of fixing the damage is so huge, it's all in how you look at it."</p>Linda Tischlerhttp://www.fastcodesign.com/1671504http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671504/a-plan-to-hurricane-proof-new-york-with-a-ring-of-wetlands?partner=rss
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671504/a-plan-to-hurricane-proof-new-york-with-a-ring-of-wetlands?partner=rss#commentsThu, 20 Dec 2012 21:30 +0000AROClimate changeRising CurrentsStephen Cassellurban planningArchitecture